Students on the East Tech High School robotics team almost pulled an all-nighter getting “Bumblebee,” their robot, ready for a recent tournament.

At the last minute, they had to redesign a part that wasn’t working right.

“Twelve o’clock hit, we were on it,” said J’Dian Farris, a Tech Warriors team member who drives the robot. “One o’clock hit, man, everybody goofed off. Two o’clock, working back again. Everybody had a great part in it.” 

Farris and a handful of his teammates worked on the robot until about 4 a.m. Thursday, the day the competition started. They met back up a couple hours later to bring Bumblebee to the Wolstein Center, where the FIRST Robotics Buckeye Regional was taking place.

They lugged their whole workstation, or pit, there, too — cabinets full of tools and parts they would need to make adjustments between matches. 

The team first competed in the Buckeye Regional in 2022. Back then, they set up their pit in a designated spot on “rookie lane” with the other new teams. The team competed with an “everybot” built from a universal kit. 

This will be the last Buckeye Regional for Farris, Team Captain Stephen Marquez and Harmony Reed, all seniors.

This year, the Tech Warriors weren’t on rookie lane. The team has a state championship under its belt. And Bumblebee has a few more tricks than the standard everybot.

“We’re gonna go out with a banger,” Farris said.

A former team captain returns from college

After some practice matches on Thursday, the Tech Warriors finally got some rest before Friday’s qualification matches. As they hung out in the pit on Friday morning, a familiar face called out from the stands. Siy Stoutemire, the team captain last year, drove from college to reunite with his former teammates. 

After graduating from East Tech last year, Stoutemire enrolled at Kent State University to study mechatronics, a blend of mechanical, computer, electrical and robotic engineering. Competing in robotics played a huge role in his decision to get into that field, he said. He even earned college credit while he was still at East Tech. 

“If it wasn’t for this, I probably wouldn’t be in college right now,” Stoutemire said. “It just made me really passionate about what I want to do in the future.”

Stoutemire looks back fondly on his time with the Tech Warriors. He remembers dancing and joking around with his teammates during build days, he said. There were also times they put the wrong parts on the robot and had to tear it down and do it over again.

“I wish I could turn back time because that was the best,” he said. “I had the best time of my life.”

Earrings, keychains and first aid kits

Although competition can get fierce at robotics tournaments, there’s a sense of camaraderie, too. FIRST Robotics even made up a word for it: “coopertition.”

In that spirit, teams bring little keepsakes to hand out to each other at tournaments. The Tech Warriors made earrings, keychains and buttons. This year’s FIRST Robotics game was ocean-themed, so Malik Frazier, the Tech Warriors’ programmer, laser cut acrylic sheets into the shape of coral. His teammates Milan Walker and Jeramiah Martin attached hooks to the plastic coral charms to make hundreds of earring sets.

The team also put together first-aid kits to hand out at tournaments. Safety Coordinator Makia Saleem got a grant to buy materials such as bandages and burn cream. It’s easy to overlook how dangerous robotics can be, she said.

Restoring coral reefs to score points

FIRST Robotics comes up with a new game every year. This year’s game is based around coral reef restoration. Players drive their robots with video game controllers, scoring points by having their robot place tubes, representing coral, onto the arms of a metal frame, representing a reef. At the end of each match, a robot can score bonus points by climbing onto a cage and suspending itself off the ground.

In FIRST Robotics tournaments, teams compete in randomly selected alliances of three. Each match pits one alliance against another. Teams get ranking points individually based on their performances during matches. Teams get placed on a new random alliance for each match.  

Bumblebee, the Tech Warriors’ robot, shares a design with two other local teams: The Red Dragons from the Cuyahoga Community College Youth Technology Academy and the Argonauts from Davis Aerospace & Maritime High School. A mentor for the Red Dragons designed the robot with an elevator mechanism so it can raise its arm to place coral on the highest points of the reef, which earn more points.

‘How can we make this work?’

The Buckeye Regional was the Tech Warriors’ second tournament this season. One weekend earlier, they were at another tournament in Cincinnati, so they had to work quickly to get Bumblebee ready for the Buckeye Regional. 

The Tech Warriors had some issues with Bumblebee’s arm during the Cincinnati tournament, so they mostly played defense rather than scoring. They had a tough run at the Buckeye Regional, too, winning two of their 10 qualification matches on Friday and Saturday. 

The Tech Warriors, the Red Dragons and the Argonauts all had issues with their robots’ climbing mechanism, so they had to redesign it together. They came up with a solution early Thursday morning. 

“We had to figure out, all just talking, how can we make this work without changing the position of the elevator and changing the base because we just didn’t have that kind of time,” Tech Warriors Head Coach LaShawn Thomas said. 

Red Dragons Mentor Avery Tinkey came up with a solution, and the Tech Warriors got it working Thursday afternoon, just in time for a couple of practice matches. 

Then, right at the end of the Tech Warriors’ second qualification match on Friday, a loud crack rang out in the arena. A ratchet strap in Bumblebee’s climbing mechanism snapped, so Tinkey helped the team put a new one on.

The Tech Warriors didn’t make it into the playoff matches at the Cincinnati tournament or the Buckeye Regional, so they won’t qualify for the FIRST Robotics Championship later on this month. They might make it to the Ohio State Championship, but organizers for the tournament haven’t yet announced the qualifying teams.