Congratulations to our FIRST Robotics 2023-24 Winning Teams!

Downey Unified high school students from Downey High and Warren High pose together at the 2024 FIRST Championship, an international robotics competition, in April 2024, held in Houston, Texas.

It has been an exciting and momentous year for our two high school FIRST Robotics teams! This April, both the Downey High Striking Vikings: Team 5851 and the Warren High Warbots: Team 9408 competed on the worldwide stage by both qualifying for the international 2024 FIRST Championship – FIRST Robotics Competition held this April, in Houston, Texas.

We join our school communities and families in congratulating our outstanding robotics students and talented staff advisors for their success in competition this year. We applaud our students’ skill and character as they each competed and were recognized with awards as they worked hard to improve their play as teams, to continuously improve after each event.

Downey Unified’s high school FIRST Robotics program is the culmination of our district’s robust robotic, coding and STEM programs, offered to our students as early as elementary school. Starting with our third, fourth and fifth grade students competing in the annual Robolympics, feeding into our middle school VEX robotics tournaments, FIRST robotics further exposes our budding roboticists to opportunities of student leadership, work-based learning and engineering and STEM career pathways.

Please see only some of each team’s accomplishments below:

Striking Vikings: Team 5851

• Two-Time Competitor – 2024 & 2016 FIRST Championship
• Winner – 2024 Utah Regional  
• Team Spirit Award – 2024 Nevada Regional
• Since 2016, 100% of graduating members have been accepted into College engineering programs
• Striking Vikings has an average of 36 members with a 50/50 ratio of boys to girls

Downey High’s Striking Vikings pose with their Winners banner at the 2024 FIRST Robotics Utah Regional robotics competition

Warbots: Team 9408

• Rookie Season Competitor – 2024 FIRST Championship
• Winner & Inspiration Award – 2024 Los Angeles Regional  
• All-Star Award – 2024 Port Hueneme Regional
• Ranked 192 out of 3474 teams worldwide & 18th in California
• Warbots has 29 members, and is over 50% female

Warren High’s Warbots pose with their Winners banner at the 2024 FIRST Robotics Los Angeles Regional robotics competition

Members of the Striking Vikings and Warbots teamed up in an alliance to compete at this year’s international 2024 FIRST Robotics Championship