Philadelphia team wins nationwide robotics championship thanks to strong defense

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — You know what they say — defense wins championships. Now a local robotics team is returning home from a national competition as champions thanks to their superb defense.

Central High School’s 88-member RoboLancers team was one of the four-team alliance who won the 2024 FIRST championship in Houston, Texas.

Central was one of over 3,500 teams to participate in the competition leading up to the 600-team championship. They were one of three Philly teams to make the championship along with SCH Robotics from Springside Chestnut Hill Academy and I.Θ.W.A. from Bodine High School.

In the competition and championship, students build a robot designed to play a new competitive game – the rules and goals of this game are released each year in January. By March and April, it’s time for tournaments.

Crescendo was the game created for 2024. In the music-themed game, the student-controlled robots have to collect foam rings called notes and carry them across the arena to score, then climb onto a stage to earn points.

The matches involve a group of three teams vs. another group of three teams. You can check out how the game is played in this YouTube video of the competition. Central High School’s robot is the one numbered 321.

The School District of Philadelphia said Central High School junior Yona Koresh “played a crushing defense that shut out world-class opponents in the finals.”

“Our goal is to cut the other team’s points in half,” Koresh said in an interview during the competition.

RoboLancers were part of an alliance with teams from Binyamina-Giv’at Ada, Israel; Sedalia, Missouri; and Phoenix, Arizona.

Bodine’s team, which attended thanks to the help of donations to their fundraiser, were named the rookie All-Star team for the mid-Atlantic region.