Robotics Team Returns From Lexington After Victory

Courtesy of Megan Hayes-Golding

On February 15, 2025, the Deerfield Robotics Team placed first in the Battle of Lexington. This middle and high school robotics competition organized by the First Tech Challenge has been hosted at Lexington High School in Massachusetts since 2004. Deerfield’s robotics team placed first out of 27 competitors, marking its best result in the past few years. At Lexington, the team earned the highest score in the competition’s history and also qualified for the state championship.

Preparation for the competition started in September. Deerfield Robotics Team Captain and Scroll Online Editor Kevin Yang ’25 talked about the difficulties the team faced in the preparation stage designing the robot. “It [the robot] could literally be any shape; we had to go through a lot of iterations to figure out what worked best,” he said. Yang explained the team needed to design and redesign the robot multiple times before creating their final product. In addition to working on the robot, the Deerfield Robotics team also attended various scrimmages in the Fall Term to get more used to the competitive atmosphere.

First Tech Challenge competitions require two teams and their robots to work together in accomplishing a task. To succeed in the competition, the robot must not only complete the tasks it is assigned but also collaborate effectively with other teams. Additionally, Yang explained that the other strong contenders in the state really affect the result. “It [the final result] really depends on the robots we are working with and the robots we are competing against,” he said.

When recalling his favorite part of the competition, Yang said, “It was great seeing all the team members work together.” The Deerfield robotics team is a small team of eight students, which makes each member and their cooperation especially valuable. “Program is really difficult,” Yang said. “It is dependent on students, the knowledge that they bring to the program.” Yang thinks that this victory bringing more visibility to the team might be a way to overcome this challenge. Science and Math Teacher and Robotics Coach Megan Hayes-Golding echoed his statements, “I am happy that this success has made the robotics team more visible. Robotics hasn’t been the most visible team in the past.”

Yang also mentions reliability in their robot as a major contributing factor of the victory, saying “We are definitely not the flashiest robot, but that is all we can do while being reliable.” Mx. Hayes-Golding also comments on this by pointing out, “In the past we tried to do everything, now it’s more of a trade off for a more reliable robot.” She relates that this strategy of being more reliable rather than reaching too high is a valuable lesson that the team learned by saying, “In the future I hope we can remember this lesson, and I am excited for us to remember this lesson.”