Robot Games: SHS Hosts, Shares Win At Robotics Tournament

Jill R. Kelly
2 days ago
6 min read

The CyberKnights drive team PHILIP THIBODEAU PHOTOS

Southington High School’s robotics team, the CyberKnights, is one of the oldest in the country. The league – FIRST Robotics Competition, or FRC – first began holding national competitions in 1997. The Cyberknights formed the following year, in 1998, and received the official designation FRC Team 195, which means they were the 195^th team to join.

Since then the league has grown by leaps and bounds, with well over 10,000 high school teams competing in various local, regional, and national events. The number ‘195’ emblazoned on the team’s robots is an indicator of the team’s age.

Age is important in the world of competitive robotics, since it usually means stable sources of funding, mentorship, and tradition. Funding matters because building a competition robot is an expensive proposition, with costs running upwards of $40,000. (Local donors foot the lion’s share of the bill.) Mentorship matters because the skills involved in building a robot are best acquired from local engineers who can draw on their know-how to help kids design and build their machines.

Finally, tradition matters because success in the robot games comes in no small part from being able to anticipate and navigate the unexpected engineering challenges that can arise during a meet.

When other teams in competition see a low number like 195 on a robot, they know the team that created it is old and assume it is good:

The robot constructed by the CyberKnights for Sunday's meet

In Southington’s case, that assumption would be correct: the CyberKnights have won many local and regional victories and advanced to nationals. Experienced teams also tend to be the ones that host competitions; the 2025 CyberKnight Invitational was Southington's second hosted match.

Yet past success doesn’t mean everything always goes smoothly.

A Quick Fix In The Pit

The event held at Southington High School on Sunday, October 26, took place on an imaginary coral reef. One task for the robots was to pick up segments of white PVC pipe – the 'coral' – and place them on a rack called the reef. The second was to put large green rubber balls representing algae up in a raised storage channel. The match ended with a parking challenge: place the robot beneath a hanging chain that lifts the robot from the floor. This video shows Team 195's robot putting coral on the reef:

Each team’s robot is operated remotely. A group of four students known as the ‘drive team’ take up their positions at a control panel which sends signals to the machine in the arena over a wifi network.

During one match Sunday, the network developed ‘jitters’, which interrupted the smooth flow of commands. Robot 195, which normally zips across the arena at blinding speed, suddenly slowed to a crawl. The drive team began communicating furiously with each other, then put their hands on their heads as the robot slowly ground to a halt, as seen here:

No panic ensued. Instead, the student team swiftly wheeled the robot out of the arena into the high school cafeteria, where a pit crew was waiting to diagnose the problem and fix it.

The problem, it turned out, was a snapped chain. The crew worked calmly to remove the broken chain and install a new one. It didn't matter that they were working with a $40,000+ vehicle and had only eight minutes to complete the fix. They had encountered scenarios like this before and everyone knew what their role was. Robot 195 was again good to go with time to spare before the deadline.

Diagnosing the problem in the 'travel shop'

Competition Structure

The competition is a full-day event. In the early part of the day, teams are randomly assigned to groups and compete for placement. High scores give a team the right to choose an "Alliance" for the second phase of the competition. An Alliance is a group of four teams with three robots that collaborate for the best collective performance.

Magdalena Conderino of Enfield High School recounted to the Outsider how the early part of the competition went on Sunday. In the first round, the CyberKnights ranked second overall. This would have allowed them to hand-pick their Alliance. But the first-ranked team, the Wired Boars of Wallingford (Team 7407, representing Choate Rosemary Hall) drafted Southington as their first pick. The CyberKnights agreed to make an Alliance from the two strongest teams, adding in Team 7153 - a collection of programs from Manchester, CT, nicknamed Aetos Dios (Eagles of Zeus) - and Team 9999, an off-season team from Manchester, NH.

From that point on, the competition is between different Alliances. The leading teams rack up most of the points, while the others do their best to contribute. Sometimes, if a particular robot is not performing well in the competition tasks, it is sent to interfere with the opponents' robots.

The Alliance which the CyberKnights were part of eventually won the meet, outscoring their opponents 178 to 154 in the final match.

Life Experience From Robotics

The CyberKnights team has over 40 members. According to alumni parent volunteer Diana Dreschler, the team is split into seven subdivisions: mechanical, business, strategy, programming, electrical, CAD (computer-aided design), and project management. Students join a group; while they mostly work on skills relevant to that group, they are constantly collaborating with other members of the team.

The strategy group has one of the most interesting tasks: scouting other teams' robots and approaches. In the world of competitive robotics, scouting is not seen as espionage! Instead it is actively encouraged, because it is a learning experience for everyone: scouts get exposure to the different ways a team can approach a design, while the teams that are scouted practice communicating their methods. Dreschler said that First Robotics adheres to a philosophy called "coopertition" – a term coined by FIRST Robotics founder Woodie Flowers to mean collaboration within competition.

Two senior members of the CyberKnights, Michaela Colwell and Jack Beauchemin, elaborated on this philosophy. They noted that if one team needs a part or help with a repair, competitors will give it to them. The reason, Colwell joked, is that "we want to beat you at your best!"

All students work on "soft skills" - the ability to work with others, to give presentations, and to speak in public. Colwell and Beauchemin demonstrated their mastery of these skills on Sunday as they initiated two Outsider reporters into all the special and unique features of FRC team structure.

There is no JV/Varsity division in Robotics. New students are guided by older students through an initial FTC or FIRST Tech Challenge project, a somewhat simpler effort than the competition robot. This project gives the new students skills while providing the older students an opportunity to practice teaching and mentoring.

Commitment And Community

Robotics is a major time commitment for its participants. Colwell and Beauchemin described a schedule of 4-5 hours a night plus weekends. The schedule is so intense that participants often eat "family dinners" - a meal brought in by students' parents for all to share.

Dues are modest, with most expenses being covered by sponsors. Local firm Mohawk Northeast, Inc. received accolades from many team members for donating part of their facility on Atwater Street to the team as a place to meet and work on its robot. "It used to be a batting cage," explained Athen Kalivas, a senior member of the CyberKnights' project management group.

Donors also provided the elaborate "Travel Shop" the team set up in Southington High School's cafeteria – job cases full of parts and tools for maintenance.

The team also does outreach events. Members of the CyberKnights go into elementary and middle school classrooms to lead workshops on simpler projects, sometimes as part of FLL, or First Lego League. They also offer programs at farmers markets, boy scout and girl scout meetings, and "Elder Nights," where they lead senior citizens through building a Lego robotics project.

Colwell and Beauchemin said that participation in Robotics can lead to college scholarships at technically oriented schools like Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Rochester Institute of Technology. Quinnipiac University offers a tuition discount of over $20,000 to Robotics participants. Both Colwell and Beauchemin intend to pursue engineering in college, with Beauchemin eyeing electrical engineering.

Meanwhile, one assumes, the CyberKnights will continue to excel at every level of robotic... coopertition.

Packed stands at the CyberKnights Invitational

Note: we would like to extend a special thank you to Gary Garber, lead coach of Team 1512, for helping us better understand the world of competitive high school robotics.