The freshmen on the Iron Panthers took part in their first robotics tournament, Capital City Classics at Elk Grove, from Saturday, Oct. 26 to Sunday, Oct. 27th. The tournament is an off-season FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) tournament, and the Iron Panthers participated with a freshmen-built robot manned by an all-underclassmen drive team.

Each January, FRC releases a new themed challenge for robotics teams to tackle in various competitions throughout the year, much like a sports league. This year’s game, called CRESCENDO, has teams forming alliances and earning points by using robots to score orange discs, known as “notes,” into various compartments. According to junior and co-captain Serena Koopmans, the new members exceeded expectations, delivering a solid performance despite the tough competition.

“We didn’t really have any expectations because this was the first year that we’ve had freshmen build a whole new robot of that size in the fall,” Koopmans said. “We were ranked pretty in the middle throughout the competition which is pretty good, and that definitely beat my expectations.”

The competition was an exciting experience for new members like Freshman Robbie Gomez, who not only felt welcome in the Iron Panthers team environment but also enjoyed his new role as driver during the competition.

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“As Driver A, I controlled the physical movement of the robot around the field, and my partner, Driver B, controlled the shooter, meaning they controlled how the notes, these little orange discs, got shot out … It’s a very interconnected and friendly team. You get to learn a lot of things. It’s just a really fun experience in general,” Gomez said.

At the start of the school year, robotics had a recruitment week, where prospective members were introduced to the team, and a “rotations day,” where prospective members were exposed to the three main subteams: engineering, programming, and business. In the weeks leading up to the competition, sophomore engineering training leads Pranav Bajaj and Alex Bertelli taught the new members essential skills.

“We prepared the freshmen by teaching them all the skills they could learn in the lab — all the mechanical skills [and how to use] all of the machines,” Bajaj said.

Koopmans noted the importance of training these new members before the team loses important senior members after graduation.

“We have a lot of seniors this year and not that many juniors, so we’re trying to prepare the team for in May when the seniors graduate … we’re trying to train up new members so that that isn’t a huge loss for us,” Koopmans said.

This year, the Iron Panthers have been focused on team bonding — organizing events like pool parties and laser tag to create a welcoming team environment. Freshman Sonia Shin has found the team to be really supportive as a community.

“Everyone has been super supportive and helpful. Everyone I’ve talked to, they’ve been really open in sharing [the] experience that they’ve had, and I think there are also just so many people in robotics, so I’ve been able to learn so much from so many different people,” Shin said. “… I can definitely see myself staying on the team for the rest of the year … even all four years [of high school].”