Scrimmage · November 2025
FIRST Tech Challenge · Glenelg Country School · Ellicott City, Maryland
Dragoneers 607
A student-run robotics team, back in the shop for the 2026–27 season. We design it, build it, code it, break it, and fix it. Mentors ask questions; students hold the drill.
Who we are
Students build the robot.
Mentors ask questions.
We're a FIRST Tech Challenge team of high-school students at Glenelg Country School. Every season FIRST releases a new game in September; by December we're competing with a robot that didn't exist three months earlier.
Last season's game was DECODE: robots collected green and purple artifacts, sorted them, and launched them into a goal, reading AprilTags to know where they were. Our answer was a rotating drum, a flywheel launcher, and an intake made of 3D-printed wheels and heat-bent plexi. Here's how it worked. The 2026–27 game has just kicked off, and the shop is full of cardboard again.
The rule we care about most: mentors guide, but students do the actual work. If a part is on the robot, a student designed it, printed it, wired it, or wrote the code that moves it.
Last season in numbers
Last season's robot
Drum, flywheel, cheese wheels
Our DECODE robot. The drum held three artifacts and indexes a sixth of a turn at a time, so a pocket always faced either the intake or the launcher. The flywheel launcher was designed on a whiteboard full of projectile equations before anyone cut metal. The intake went through cardboard, spinning bars and a kicker before the compliant wheels won.
- DriveMecanum, dead-wheel odometry
- ControlREV Control Hub + Expansion Hub, Java
- VisionAprilTags, Limelight
From last season
Favorite photos
2025–26 journal
Where we left off
November 30
Scrimmage
First matches against other Maryland teams, and a to-fix list to bring home.
November 29
Practice field
A field taped onto the shop floor and full cycles until the drivers stopped thinking.
November 22
Wiring and batteries
Everything wired, a battery mount built, and a call with a Maryland representative.
Outreach
Beyond the shop
Last season: Family Day in September, Solar Science Day in October, Game Night in November. We hand the controller to anyone who asks, and we planned our fundraiser with a Monte Carlo simulation because that seemed like the obvious way to do it.
