By Brett Schlossberg
With many of the spring sports’ teams chasing region and state championships, let’s look beyond sports. The Woodward robotics team qualified for state this year, and it was an incredible achievement. The team had to go through many rounds of qualifying, and they did it! They exceeded their own expectations. Elizabeth McGivern ‘27 was pleasantly surprised the team did so well.
“I did not at the beginning think that we would make top twenty,” Elizabeth McGivern said.
Her initial opinion was quickly proven wrong. The team struggled last year with a lot of issues during the competitions, but their first competition of this season in Charleston changed things. The team got closer with each other, and that transcended into a better performance. Rhythm Bazari ‘27 thinks this competition was a turning point for the team.
“How we performed in Charleston, which was our first competition, I think that really told us…that we could definitely make state because, well, last year, we didn’t do as well as our [robot’s] arm broke off multiple times,” Rhythm said.
The team increased in members this past season. This was especially true in the electrical department who had two members in 2023. They now have four electrical members, the biggest it has been. The electrical team is in charge of making sure the wiring and technology on the robot is working properly. Rhythm, who was in this department, explained what his role entailed.
“I did… wirework…[and] attaching the motors together… through these things called cano wires… [and I did] circulation… for code,” Rhythm said.
Collin McCullough ‘25, another member of the team, elaborated on the importance of the larger electrical staff.
“This allowed for…less complex designs for our bot and less malfunctions happening, and this also… allowed us to score more points in the competitions,” Collin McCullough said.
Building a robot requires a lot of steps. Rhythm pointed out the collaboration required of multiple different departments making the robot creation a team effort.
“We have to hand-cut metal pieces and we start out by creating this thing called CAD which is a computerated drawing…[to] map out how we’re gonna build our robot, and then… get those custom parts that we put in CAD and… build our robot, and then… there’s some communication with our electrical team, of…where to put our electrical components in order for there to be batteries, and for motors to run… then we give it to the programming which… allows for the robot to drive, and…an autonomous allows it to move by itself,” Rhythm said.
With all of these steps comes the risk of a costly mistake. A robot is hard to make. According to Rhythm, a successful robot needs bumpers and circular discs called notes that make the robot swerve.
“They [the bumpers] kept falling off because they were just not secure when hitting other robots, …with programming we had to figure out what positions… to get this robot in order to score with the notes… it’s just a type of… drive-train for our robot… make sure there’s zero, which means, it [the robot] needs to be in the…the zero position, otherwise the code won’t work,” Rhythm said.
Collin recalls when their robot’s bumpers fell off during a competition. Despite this, the team didn’t just give up. They stuck together and repaired the bumpers.
“[We put in] more screws … almost too many screws… we had to… lock the bumpers onto the bot,” Collin said.
Collin learned a few things from his experiences at the state championship.
“There is… so much energy in… state competitions… compared to regular competitions…another thing I learned [is] that… people are…generally very nice…everyone in the competition’s so welcoming even though it’s… very competitive,” Collin said.
The robotics team qualified for the state competition this season, but they aren’t going to settle for that next year. They want to qualify for the world championship. Rhythm thinks the team has a good chance at completing their goal.
“We gotta surpass our limits…I think we can do it because we got pretty good numbers…and… other programming leads, electrical leads, they’re all moving up into our team captains, so I think it’s a very great, um, opportunity for us to go to world,” Rhythm said.
Making state was an amazing accomplishment for the robotics team. They made improvements and grew in belief. The commitment from everyone involved was great, and the robotics team deserves to celebrate.
“I’m very proud of my team, and… how much they have…helped… me to grow in robotics and how much we’ve come so far in our robotics team… and I think we can get to world next year, so let’s hope for the best,” Rhythm said.
