REGION — Even among competitors, robotics is a team sport.
An alliance of the Aluminum Narwhals of Canyon Crest Academy, Team Paradox of San Dieguito Academy, and Σ-Motion of Rancho Bernardo High School worked together to win the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) California District San Diego event on March 22 at Francis Parker High School.
The victory marked Σ-Motion’s first win since 2018, while the Aluminum Narwhals had already secured a competition win earlier this month at the FRC California District Hueneme Port in Ventura County, aligning with Phantom Catz of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School and Eagle Engineering of Chaminade College Preparatory High School.
Both competitions are part of the FIRST Robotics Competition’s California district season, with teams competing at multiple regional events and forming different alliances at each stop.
Hayley Bloomfield, president of business operations for Team Paradox and a senior at San Dieguito Academy, said that sense of camaraderie is central to robotics culture.
“There are so many different types of kids on our team and we want to make sure that everyone feels included and everyone feels supported and that it’s safe to fully be themselves, because that’s when we think we can get our best work done,” Bloomfield said. “People can fully bring themselves and bring their own unfiltered identities and ideas to our team.”
This year’s competition format requires teams to scoop nearly 6-inch diameter foam balls from a playing surface roughly the size of a volleyball court and shoot them into a central hub, similar to a basket. The first 20 seconds of each match are fully autonomous, followed by two minutes and 20 seconds of driver-controlled play.
“It’s just an absolute barrage of balls coming down when you have multiple robots on the same team shooting at once,” said Nick Foote, lead engineering coach and mentor for Team Paradox. “It’s something else.”
Teams are randomly grouped into three-team alliances during qualifying rounds. Based on rankings, teams are then drafted into playoff alliances that compete for the event title.
Foote said successful alliances balance offensive and defensive capabilities.
“You want to score as much as possible, but it also helps to have a robot making life difficult for the other teams’ robots,” he said. “Rancho Bernardo High was amazing at defense — preventing our opponents from scoring as quickly as we could.”
After a semifinal finish at the district San Gabriel Valley event the following weekend, Team Paradox qualified for the FIRST California Southern State Championship. The Aluminum Narwhals also qualified for the state championship. Both teams have an opportunity to advance to the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas, an international event featuring 19,000 high school students and more than 600 teams.
Σ-Motion is scheduled to compete in the FRC California District Orange County event from April 2 to 4.
Simeon Kim, design lead and co-president of Σ-Motion and a senior at Rancho Bernardo High School, said that robotics allows students to bring creative ideas to life through technical tools such as computer-aided design.
“We love to imagine different things — whether it’s from books we’re reading, in movies we’re watching,” Kim said. “And that 3D modeling software, that CAD software really makes it possible for us to take what’s in our heads and actually create it in real life.”
Kim said he had little interest in engineering until he saw a team demonstration as a freshman.
“The demonstration was super cool,” he said. “It’s this big moving robot, and hearing that students are the ones creating it made it seem really awesome. So I wanted to be a part of that.”
Foote said he was similarly inspired to start the robotics team at San Dieguito Academy after attending a competition with family friends in 2006.
“You don’t just submit a paper and then a presentation of how you would do it in a class setting and then you’re done,” he said. “You see it through to the end. Then you succeed or you fail or somewhere in between. And learn from it.”
Bloomfield said her interests evolved beyond engineering to include business operations, sponsorships and community outreach.
“We do a lot of volunteering in our community to try to uplift the STEM community,” she said. “That really drew me in and it made me realize that robotics wasn’t just an engineering club, but it’s more of a one-size-fits-all club that’s almost more of a community for everyone to join in.”
She compared robotics teams to startup companies, where students — with mentorship — handle not only engineering and coding but also finances, logistics and operations.
Robotics teams are often larger than traditional high school sports programs, with Team Paradox including 42 students and Σ-Motion about 60.
To build cohesion, Bloomfield said Team Paradox emphasizes team bonding.
“We do a lot of team parties every year,” she said. “One of the main goals with that is to create a bond between that group of kids to create a support system with each other.”
Kim said robotics has been “one of the best experiences you can have in high school,” offering opportunities to learn, collaborate and grow.
“It’s a really great experience to be able to fail because we’re going to fail a lot,” he said. “We’re all high schoolers. A lot of us are using some of these things for the first time. And so there’s bound to be failures. There’s bound to be things that go wrong. And just having the ability to work through it ourselves, to be able to learn from those mistakes and try again and continue trying.”
Watch video from Day 1 of the First Robotics Competition (FRC) California District San Diego Event:
