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Focused, Arhaan Jafri ’27 and Souren Uchat ’26 from Team Slingshot drive their robot during a match. The duo spent many hours practicing their driving together, to build chemistry and work better together in sync.
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Nervously, Yonnie Yang ’27, Aubrey Tipps ’26, and Jihoon Im ’26 from Team Slingshot watch their team compete during a match. The trio all worked together on their robot’s software, leading to a stressful day as they had little time to test and adjust their code between matches.
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Inspecting his robot, Satvik Chawla ’25 from Team Tomahawk prepares to begin a match. Chawla has been on Team Tomahawk for four years, holding the position of team captain for his final year.
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Watching for errors, Jihoon Im ’26, Arhaan Jafri ’27, Souren Uchat ’26, and Yonnie Yang ’27 from Team Slingshot test their robot’s slide extension right before a match. The team experienced many problems with components of this mechanism breaking during testing, causing worry that it would not hold up during matches.
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Holding a hex key, Adwik Rath ’28 from Team Boomerang adjusts a part on his robot. Boomerang’s robot underwent lots of stress during matches, meaning Rath spent lots of time repairing it between matches so it could make it through the day.
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The stands shake with the rumbles of the crowd as teams cheer, eagerly watching their robots fight for dominance. On Saturday, Dec. 7, the Westwood Robotics For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology (FIRST) Tech Challenge teams competed at the FIRST in Texas GEMS League Meet 3. This was the most intense event yet for teams Slingshot, Hunga Munga, Tomahawk, and Boomerang as their competition grew more fierce due to vast improvements in all the robots across the board. Additionally, with finals looming and academic pressure rising as the semester comes to a close, balancing robotics and school became more difficult.
“To balance the high load of both competitive robotics and school work, I have been scaling down [on] sleeping,” Slingshot Software Co-Lead Jihoon Im ’26 said. “[That way] I can do more work in the time I have in a day.”
Team Slingshot put on a respectable performance, winning three out of five qualification matches. Teams Hunga Munga and Tomahawk won three out of their five matches each as well, while Team Boomerang struggled under the pressure, winning zero out of their five matches for the day. Teams felt dissatisfied with their performance, as many went into the competition with high expectations after their rigorous preparation.
“I feel like [our] robot performed sub-optimally this time,” Im said. “For the next competition we [need] more reliability and [we need to] tune out the little kinks and quirks of the robot so we have a more reliable and more well-rounded robot.”
With such high pressure ramping up as the season progresses, the members have poured in countless hours over the past few weeks, driving them to expect perfection.
“We have [a] high potential for our [robot],” Slingshot Software Co-Lead Aubrey Tipps ’26 said. “So it’s just disappointing for a week of work [going into the robot] and it to not come to fruition in competition.”
Following this competition, the FIRST in Texas GEMS League Tournament will take place in late January. The tournament will be the final guaranteed competition, because in order to advance past the local league stage to the central Texas Area competition, teams will need to perform at the highest level to qualify. No team is guaranteed to advance, and each one knows their season could come to a premature end in January.
“[Knowing the stakes] just makes me work harder, ” Tipps said. “I know [our] goal, I know what we need to do, [and] it’s just a motivating factor.”
While the threat of elimination looms, members have high aspirations for the challenges ahead.
“If nothing goes wrong, [our goal] would be to break the world record,” Im said. “I think [it’s actually possible], [along with] having a consistent [robot] that works every single round.”
With their work cut out for them, the FTC teams hunker down to prepare for the league championships, with each hoping to come out on top. The Westwood Robotics FTC teams will compete on Saturday, Jan. 18 at the FIRST in Texas GEMS League Tournament.
