With the FIRST Robotics League team from Warren G. Harding entering its 29th year and the team from Howland High School entering its fifth year, team members are already working on building robots to meet the 2026 challenge.

This week, the teams gathered at their schools, where they were presented the tasks the robots must complete to score points and advance in the season.

In addition to Warren and Howland, there are also teams from Austintown, Champion, Ursuline, Girard and Canfield.

The challenge this year is “Rebuilt,” with competitors saying it was inspired by past challenges.

The Warren G. Harding FIRST Robotics Team 48 gathered in their build room at the school’s wellness center to begin brainstorming ideas and reviewing competition rules. The team has about 30 members.

Michael Whiddon, a senior on the team marking his fourth year competing, said the challenge looks fast-paced and is all about scoring in a specified amount of time.

“It’s an interesting challenge. The robots have to gather items and shoot balls quickly. This is my last year. I always try to give the new team members advice. I love seeing everything come together as we compete with the robot,” Whiddon said.

He said the robot scores points by shooting a ball into a particular area and hanging and climbing on a monkey-bar-type ladder. The higher the robot gets, the more points it scores.

The team has made it to nationals in past years.

Haley Spangler, a sophomore on the team marking her first year, said she looks forward to building the robot and seeing how it competes.

Aiden Keller, a sophomore on the team in his second year, said he will focus on the design and manufacturing of the robot.

“My first year was very humbling and a learning experience for me. It was a lot of fun. The challenge is to develop a robot that will do well. The competitions were exciting and stressful. I was able to show my passion for robotics and STEM,” Keller said.

Frank Bosak, a team adviser, said the Harding team helped the Howland and Ursuline teams get started. Those teams are now on their own.

Bosak, who was a team member when he was at Harding, said, “There is so much inspiration. We are doing more than just building robots. What we do inspires our students to go into engineering fields or become inventors.”

He said Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST Robotics, has said it is important to invent inventors, which is what this program is doing.

“We want to inspire students to go into STEM education to become an inventor or engineer. That is what keeps us going,” Bosak said.

He said the team has a lot of experience to lean on from the past.

“There are still challenges we will need to work through,” Bosak said.

Bosak said a practice scrimmage with the robots will be March 7 at Harding. The team will compete March 12 in Rochester, New York; March 25 in Chicago; and April 8 in Miami, Florida.

HOWLAND TEAM

At Howland High School, members of the Howland Tiger Bots Team 8718 also have been preparing for the season.

Emily Siegfried, a freshman, said she looks forward to team collaboration and working with different groups to get the robot built and programmed.

“I want to learn but also have fun. I am going to learn to control the robot, which has to be able to gather as many balls as it can and shoot them into a special section in a specified time. It seems like it will be a very hyper competition. We will need to switch between offense and defense the whole game,” she said.

Siegfried said in the last few seconds the team will focus on the robot scoring points.

The team has more than 24 members who will first compete at the Buckeye Regional at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland in March.

Siegfried said the team has done sketches of the robot’s arms.

“We are really excited about this season. I think it will be a great season. People said the challenge is similar to the 2020 game, which was the year we did not compete,” she said.

Hayden Plant, a junior in his third year on the team, said he wants to focus on a better design for the robot.

“Being on the team makes me feel involved. It’s fun,” he said.

Mya Dubic, a junior in her second year on the team, said she likes being part of the team designing and building the robot.

David Siegfried, team adviser, said he studied the 2020 season challenge, and while Howland did not compete that year, this season’s challenge is very similar.

“The students have a lot of ideas of how to get the robot to move the balls on the field quickly,” he said.

Siegfried said the team in its second year of competing in 2023 received the Ohio State Championship Alliance Award.

In the team’s fourth year during the postseason, it received the “Voltage Valley Vibe Award.”

Siegfried said the Harding team helped them by serving as a mentor team for the first few years.