At the Arizona East Regional, a FIRST Robotics Competition held from March 19-22, the Iron Panthers put on a dominating performance. After finishing in first place out of over 40 teams in qualification matches, the Panthers formed an alliance that placed second overall in the playoffs and qualified for the World Championships for the first time since 2019, where the team won the event.

In a FIRST Robotics Competition, high school teams build robots to complete certain tasks to earn points in a match. In any given match, two alliances of three teams will compete with each other to rack up points. Qualification match alliances are randomized, while in playoffs, the top eight teams from the qualification matches form permanent alliances and draft two other teams to join.

In addition, the Panthers won the Regional Engineering Inspiration Award for the first time ever, given to the team that best demonstrates a commitment to engineering outreach and education. Winning the prestigious award automatically qualified Burlingame for the World Championships.

“Honestly, the Engineering Inspiration Award was a little bit of a surprise. We’ve been really trying to work towards that since our team was founded, and this is the first time we’ve ever won it,” co-captain and senior Zack Weinberg said.

The team was eligible for the World Championships through their rankings in Regional points, which are based on their cumulative result throughout the season. At the Ventura Regional earlier this month, the team’s alliance placed third in the playoffs after the Panthers placed sixth in qualification matches and won the Autonomous Award for their programming subteam’s exceptional performance on coding the robot to score game pieces without a human driver. But at the Arizona East Regional, the team took things to the next level, utilizing the few weeks between competitions to fine-tune their robot.

“I don’t think anyone expected the kind of level of amazing performance we had,” Weinberg said. “Looking back on it, I’m so immensely proud of what myself and the whole team has accomplished … and I’m so proud of what every single member of our team has done to bring us to this.”

The Panthers also took home an individual award. Junior co-captain Serena Koopmans won the FIRST Dean’s List Finalist Award, an honor presented to just two students at the competition. The Dean’s List recognizes students with exceptional dedication to STEM, their team, and the greater robotics community. Ian Hartwig, an adult mentor, says that Koopmans’ impact on the team, especially with outreach, was crucial to winning the Regional Engineering Inspiration Award. Koopmans co-organizes multiple events for the team in the community, including Cub Central, a year-round program dedicated to teaching elementary schoolers about STEM.

“The awards we got at Arizona show [Koopmans’] impact because … a lot of the things that she’s worked on were instrumental to us having gotten Engineering Inspiration, like the summer camp program for elementary students and Cub Central,” Hartwig said.

At the World Championships, which will be held in Texas in mid-April, the Panthers hope to continue growing while competing alongside other top-ranked international teams.

“[The World Championship] has always been this vision that we haven’t quite reached,” Koopmans said. “I’m so excited because by going to Texas, we get to interact with teams from all over the world — it’s a really great opportunity to meet new people and learn new ideas.”