Last spring, Cleveland’s East Tech High School robotics team members found themselves on their biggest stage yet: the Ohio state championship.
There were moments when things didn’t look great for the team. Stephen Marquez, now a senior and team captain, remembers the mistakes, all the corrections the team had to make and especially all the times the team’s robot broke down.
But the robot — and the team — held it together.
The Tech Warriors won the state championship. Now, the team is gearing up for another season. From bug-fixing code to fabricating one-of-a-kind parts, Signal Cleveland is following the team this season to introduce our readers to the players and coaches behind the robot.
The East Tech team’s road to the state championship
The Tech Warriors team formed in 2019 when the Great Lakes Science Center launched an initiative to support robotics teams in Cleveland. East Tech’s principal at the time asked a teacher if she’d like to try her hand at coaching.
“I said, ‘That’s a lot of work,’” recalled LaShawn Thomas, an engineering teacher at East Tech who has been with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District for 26 years. She thought back to the rich history of robotics in Cleveland, recalling the award-winning citywide team of the late ‘90s and early 2000s.
Thomas agreed to give it a shot. Then, shortly after the team got off the ground, the COVID-19 pandemic paused tournaments. The handful of students from the team’s first generation had to settle for a couple years of practice.
But they stayed on the team and recruited classmates. Come 2022, the team jumped into their first tournament at the Great Lakes Science Center. The students competed with five other Cleveland teams and many more from across the Midwest.
It wasn’t easy at first, Thomas said. As an African American woman leading a brand new team, she got some looks from other competitors.
“Some people shook my hand, others were just looking at me like I was a new, shiny coin or something,” she said. “I immediately felt a little intimidated. Then, I thought about it, I just kind of calmed myself down, and then I prayed about it. I said, ‘No, you deserve to be here just like anyone else, and you’re gonna own this.’”
Thomas hasn’t looked back since then. Coaching the team is like an extra full-time job, she said, but it’s worth it. She even got her husband, Rick Thomas, on board as a mentor. The Tech Warriors are truly a “mom-and-pop” team, she quipped.
“I just decided, this is where God wants me to be,” she said. “I love it.”
How do robotics competitions work?
The Tech Warriors, along with many teams, participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition, the most prominent robotics league in the world. FIRST announces a new “game” each January. Each game introduces a new setting, scenario and challenges teams have to complete to score points and win matches. Teams have six weeks to build their robots before tournaments start up.
Teams compete in smaller regional events to earn spots in higher-level tournaments. During tournaments, teams form and compete in alliances. Teams can form new alliances for each tournament. For example, the Tech Warriors shared their state title last year with their alliance teams from Orange High School, John Marshall High School and Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy.
Last year’s game revolved around music. The robot had to pick up foam rings, called “notes” in the context of the game, and place or launch them into different containers.
This year’s game is called “REEFSCAPE.” The teams design robots to do tasks that robots would handle during real-life coral reef restoration. The Tech Warriors are working on their robot at the Cuyahoga Community College Youth Technology Academy alongside their high school robotics team, which won the world championship in 2016.
Hard work, dedication and lots of steps
Along with Thomas’ dedication, running the team takes hard work from the students. Students who compete on the team have to develop the special skills needed to design, build and run the robot during tournaments.
Some students work on using 3D modeling programs to design the robot’s parts, while others assemble those parts, soldering wires and fitting the pieces in place. Other students program the robot, connecting all its parts together with thousands of lines of computer code. Then, several students have to master maneuvering the 100-plus-pound robot with a PlayStation controller.
This year’s team has 11 students and two mentors in addition to Thomas as the coach.
All those steps have to work together, so there’s plenty of room for tiny errors to derail a tournament run, said Malik Frazier, a junior and programmer on the Tech Warriors. At one of last year’s competitions, the robot didn’t run correctly because it was too cold.
“Each competition, for some reason, we go home, and it’s good,” he said. “The next competition, something messes up out of nowhere.”
That trial and error is a core piece of what makes robotics valuable for students, Thomas said. Working with all those finicky parts teaches patience and encourages students to work together. There are opportunities for students to apply skills outside of math and engineering, too. Frazier designed a team logo and players heat-pressed his design onto their own team shirts.
“When you just watch the students grow and transform, wow, it’s amazing,” Thomas said. “Especially my seniors, I’ve definitely seen them grow.”
Player cards and photos made by Signal Cleveland’s Michael Indriolo
