On March 27th, the Lake Forest Academy Robotics Team competed in the FIRST Robotics Midwest Regional at Arlington Heights, Illinois. The competition was about building robots that pick up yellow foam balls called fuels and throw the fuels into a funnel. Points are added for every fuel that gets into the funnel. In the competition, two alliances, made up of three robotics teams, play each other on the field. There was a series of Qualifying Rounds matches played between randomly selected alliance teams, and the top eight individual teams got to choose two other teams to cooperate with them in the Elimination Round. With these eight alliances, two remain and play in best-of-three matches to determine championship. 

Before the competition, starting from January, the team discussed and agreed on the robot design. Then, as the building process moved on, members of the team went down to the Robotics lab to work on the different parts of the robot with the instruction and assistance of Queenie Wu ‘26, the leader this year. During the process, Wu, Paul Schumacher ‘27, Hari Yarlagadda ‘27, Eric McCaughan ‘28, and Jerry Wu ‘28 worked on mechanical and wiring. After the robot was completed, it was sent to the coders, Sam Baksht ‘27, Yarlagadda and Jerry Fu ’27 who worked together with the system. 

The competition went well on the first two days of qualifying, and the robot performed really strong during the matches. It accidentally broke a part of the Cache Money Robotics’ robot, and that caught their attention as it shows how strong it was. After that, the team was chosen by the Cache Money Robotics from U-High and Huskie Robotics as an alliance in the playoffs. Overall, the team is really young. While other teams have experienced mentors for assistance during the building process, the Robotics team at LFA is mostly student-led. Thus, the result was better than the team expected. 

Although the outcomes were terrific, building a robot from scratch was not easy and there were challenges that the Robotics team needed to overcome. Since the team switched systems this year, the team had a new set of motors and needed to research on how to operate them. Unexpected problems with wiring also took longer for them to figure out with the power and rewiring. While the team worked through these issues with their efforts, Edward Shaughnessy, as the instructor, also stepped in to help with wiring, materials, and trouble with the shooter, giving useful advice with his observation on the baseball pitching machine and his knowledge as an Electricity and Magnetism Physics teacher. 

This competition ended the season for the Robotics team and the team will continue growing as a young group. Wu said, “I think we have a lot of juniors this year, and that gives me a lot of hope because I think there’s a lot of potential with them working together.” With more seniors next year, the team can spread the work out better with an even stronger bond and teamwork.