Adna High School Robotics Club sets record in regional FIRST Tech Challenge competition

Team now moves on to state competition after winning regional semifinal

By Owen Sexton  / owen@chronline.com
Posted 1/13/25

Originally founded in 2017, the Adna High School Robotics Club is now headed to the state competition in its sixth FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), having won the regional semifinal competition on …

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Adna High School Robotics Club sets record in regional FIRST Tech Challenge competition

Team now moves on to state competition after winning regional semifinal

Posted

Originally founded in 2017, the Adna High School Robotics Club is now headed to the state competition in its sixth FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), having won the regional semifinal competition on Saturday, Jan. 11, at Tahoma High School in Maple Valley.

Not only did the team finish first out of 34 regional teams competing on Saturday, but it set a record in doing so, according to Cein Caldwell, host parent for Tom Bernhardt, Adna High School junior, club member and foreign exchange student from Kassel, Germany.

“Tom, along with the Adna robotics team, pulled off something totally mind-blowing tonight,” Caldwell said in a Facebook post. “It was jaw-droppingly cool! They set a WORLD RECORD! Yeah! A WORLD RECORD! We are beaming host parents.”

Officially FTC team #17077, the Adna Robotics club is also led by Adna High School senior Phoebe Allen.

The club scored a total of 382 combined points during the competition paired with another competing team — the Minutemen from Renton — which is the top score worldwide, according to the club’s mentor, Adna Elementary School science, technology, engineering and mathematics teacher Marcy Scheuber.

Scheuber spoke to The Chronicle on Monday, Jan. 13, about the club’s record-setting performance.

“We had 387, but the other team had a foul,” Scheuber said. “... Right now, we are still holding. We got through yesterday when there was one team in Russia posted (a higher score), but they quickly said it was unofficial as there was a scoring issue.”

The club went undefeated during the regional competition’s qualification rounds and ended up breaking the world record while partnered with another undefeated team during the tournament rounds.

“During the tournament play, that’s when we broke the world record,” Scheuber said.

The Chronicle met with Allen, Bernhardt and the rest of the club inside its workshop at the Adna Elementary School on Thursday, Jan. 9, to talk about Saturday’s FIRST Tech Challenge competition and the design work they had to do.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Tech Challenge (FTC) is a  worldwide nonprofit founded in 1989 that aims to prepare students for future careers in science and technology fields through inclusive, team-based robotics programs for students ranging in age from 4 to 18, according to its website.

Globally, over 6,000 teams participate in FTC competitions.

Each year, the FTC robotics build challenge is different, and students must also conduct research, design, build and showcase their work, on top of fundraising and finding local sponsors.

Students in the Adna Robotics Club are also able to utilize computer aided design, or CAD, software along with both 3D printers and laser cutters to create custom parts for their robots. Additionally, students are also responsible for programming the robot.

“We’re given an entirely new game and ruleset every year, and we have to learn to adapt,” Allen said.

This year’s challenge had them building a robot that could perform multiple functions, including picking out and collecting certain colored blocks amid a mix of red, yellow and blue blocks, along with being able to climb.

“As for how the games work, the first 30 seconds are completely autonomous, so the robot is driving itself. But after that, we have two minutes where we are able to drive it ourselves in order to complete the tasks,” Allen said.



“And for everything that we’re able to do autonomously, it gives us double the points,” Bernhardt added.

Despite coming from a small community, Adna Robotics will occasionally compete against teams from large high schools like Bellevue High School, but their competition is usually made up of FTC teams not bound to any school.

“We mainly compete against what’s called community teams, which can literally just be a pair of siblings in their garage and their parents are their mentors,” Allen said. “Those are normally some of the better teams, and they’re also the majority of teams.”

With their record-setting success at Saturday’s regional competition at Tahoma High School, the team now moves on to the state competition, where the team placed second last year.

“Last year was the best we’ve done,” Allen said.

The FTC state competition will be held on Feb. 1 at the Amazon building in Seattle.

Beyond that is the FTC World’s Competition, held in Houston, Texas, and includes teams from around the world, which they hope to make it to this year. 

Currently, the Adna Robotics Club is ranked six globally in FTC’s individual team rankings, according to the FTC’s website at http://www.ftcstats.org/2025/index.html

Sponsors and endorsements for the Adna Robotics club this year come from Uncle Jim’s Smokehouse, Braun Northwest Inc., goBILDA, Protech Composites, Comp-Prime Computers, RB Engineering and The Chronicle.

Additionally, the club also receives grant funding from the Washington state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction for participating in FIRST Tech Challenge events.

Anyone interested in participating in future FTC robotics challenges with the Adna Robotics Club can contact the club via email at adna.17077@gmail.com for information on how to get involved.

To learn more about FTC and the other robotics challenges FIRST offers, visit its website at https://www.firstinspires.org/