The sounds of fans cheering, motors whirring, and robots colliding echo throughout the gym. Battling unforeseen challenges at their second competition of the season, the Westwood Robotics For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology (FIRST) Tech Challenge teams competed at the FIRST in Texas GEMS League Meet 2 on Saturday, Nov. 16. Teams Slingshot, Hunga Munga, Tomahawk, and Boomerang played five qualification matches each, with Team Slingshot in particular performing well and ending the day ranked 1st place.

“I think [the competition] went pretty good in terms of ranking but pretty bad in terms of consistency,” Slingshot Captain Souren Uchat ’26 said. “Mostly [we had] problems with hardware, and I think we could’ve fixed [the problems] easily if we had tested [the robot] a little bit more.”

Due to the unpredictable nature of robotics competitions, teams realized early on that they had to adapt and work quickly, as breaks between matches were quite short. With components often breaking and code behaving unexpectedly, it was up to the team members to band together and get through their matches.

“We kind of all just told each other to calm down,” Slingshot Co-Software Lead Aubrey Tipps ’26 said. “We just got our hardware and software [subteams] together and identified the issues, and [our mindset was] ‘Okay, we have about five minutes before we go up for our next match, what do we need to fix next.’”

Team Slingshot focused on collaboration when working through problems, and prioritized making quick decisions — this was necessary due to the fast moving nature of the competition, where split-second decisions needed to be made on what components to prioritize and what game strategy to execute.

“We worked together pretty well,” Uchat said. “We [thought] of things as a team, and if decisions [needed] to be made fast we all cooperated and made sure that decision was done.”

With the third competition of the season approaching fast, Team Slingshot has a plan for learning from their mistakes by working quickly and maximizing their competitiveness in the upcoming competitions.

“We’re going to run hours upon hours of driver practice until we streamline every process that goes on during competition,” Uchat said. “I want to show that we’re consistent and we don’t have any [major] issues.”

Furthermore, Team Slingshot plans to build a new, more advanced robot to compete at the GEMS League Championship Tournament in January. This is a common practice by experienced teams: they prioritize a simple, easy-to-build robot for their earlier competitions, while simultaneously building another more technical and capable robot to contend with the more difficult opponents found at later competitions. 

“In [the] next two weeks [we’re] going to finish designing [our] second robot,” Uchat said. “[We’re] going to set up subteams and have them work on different robots — [we’re] going to make everybody focus up.”

 Motivated to exhibit their new and renewed skills, the FTC teams are fired up for their next chance to compete and show what they can do. With just a few weeks between this competition and the next, the team notes that keeping a focused mindset and team morale up is crucial.

“My goals are related to building the next robot and getting the team working together even better than we already are,” Uchat said. “Sometimes being locked in or working all the time isn’t the play, sometimes you have to let [the team] slack [off] a bit if you want [them] to recharge, so that’s our goal.”