San Diego County high school robotics teams compete for the world championship in Houston

“It’s a crazy venue. It’s massive,” said Jeremiah Jeffries, describing the site of the FIRST Robotics World Championships. The international competition and celebration of STEM and innovation runs through Saturday at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas.

Jeffries is the coach of the Lincoln High School Steel Stingers, one of nine San Diego County robotics teams that qualified to compete.

“There are more than 600 of the best teams from all over the world here. We are so excited to meet them, see them, see all this action, and hopefully be competitive on the field,” Jeffries said.

The Steel Stingers’ journey to Houston started earlier this school year, when a core group of about a dozen Lincoln High School students launched their dream to design and create robotics for competition. Their almost life-sized robot performed well enough to win a Ventura County regional competition in February.

They went on to take home the Rookie All-Star trophy at a UC San Diego competition in March.

“This is cool and we are so grateful,” said Julio Flores, 17, the senior who drives the Lincoln robot during the competition.

“Communication is the key to winning. Our strategy is to continue to improve on our robot. We’ve made some changes that will increase our speed and score more points,” Flores said.

Other competitors from San Diego county are from High Tech High, Poway High School, Westview High School, the Francis Parker School, Canyon Crest Academy, Torrey Pines High School, Patrick Henry High School, and Oceanside High School.

“We’ve been working really hard over the past couple of weeks to be ready for this competition,” said Eliza Blakely, 18, a senior at Oceanside High School who serves as safety officer and pit manager of the Wild Raccoons team.

The team struggled this season with a battery that disconnected during a match, killing their robot’s power. They also squeaked by in their last regional competition when they were included in a winning alliance that qualified them for the world championship. The unexpected win forced them to do last-minute fundraising for the trip to Texas.

“We’ve had so many issues, but we were able to take ginormous steps to improve our strategies and get better organized to be competitive,” Blakely said.

The Patribots from Patrick Henry High School is an established team that has competed in FIRST Robotics competitions since 2017. They are back in Houston after a respectable showing here last year.

“That’s quite the accomplishment,” said Omar Elassaad, 18, the Patrick Henry team design director and a graduating senior. “I really do feel like the bond that we had while building this robot helped us. Together, we created a fail-proof machine. If a mechanism breaks, (our backup systems) allow us to still play the game,” he said.

The Patribots have one of the larger teams in the competition, with 28 members and their mentors working to perfect every aspect of their 125-pound robot. They begin qualification rounds Thursday and continue Friday, with hopes to go on to the finals Saturday.

Emily Hager, 17, is president of the team. She carries the responsibility with a commitment to continue to include more girls in the STEM community.

“I think it adds variety and different perspectives to robotics and the design process and the overall environment of our team,” Hager said.

FIRST is an acronym that stands For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

Over the next three days organizers estimated 50,000 students, mentors, support staff and family members representing 50 countries will attend the international event.