Recap of the 2026 FRC Season for FRC 8767

My 2026 season on FRC 8767 was truly an incredible one. We went into the season never having made playoffs, and left with a states apperance, engineering inspiration award, and event finalist! It was an incredible end to the over 7 years I have spent in the program, and here's a little about it.

For some context, our team had never made playoffs before 2026. We never could quite get all the pieces together to have a sucessful and strong season. We had some good moments, but we always fell short of making that final push. Going into the 2026 season, we had a coach turnover, very little funding, and an almost completely rookie team. Personally, I felt a lot of pressure to make the season a success one last time for my senior year in the program. We had a lot of work to do, and I knew that we would need to be creative and resourceful if we had any chance of being competitive this year.

Early in the season, it was pretty clear we were starting from scratch in a lot of ways. We had a brand new coach, and brand new students, and we spent the first few weeks just getting basic reliability back into the robot. A lot of meetings were spent debugging, redesigning, and rethinking approaches we had used in previous years. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it set the foundation for everything that followed.

As build season progressed, we slowly started to find our identity as a team. Instead of trying to overbuild or chase complex ideas, we focused on consistency and match impact. That meant prioritizing reliable scoring cycles, better autonomous performance, and a drivetrain that could actually withstand repeated matches without constant repairs. For the first time since I had been on the team, everything started to feel intentional and thought out.

One of the biggest turning points came during our first competition. Going in, my expectations were fairly low internally, I just wanted to be functional and competitive as possible. But as qualifications went on, we started to realize we were actually competitive. We were executing clean matches, making smarter decisions on the field, and climbing the rankings in a way we hadn’t experienced before.

By the end of qualifications, we had done something our team had never done before: we were selected for playoffs. That alone felt like a milestone. We didn’t win the event, but we had made a statement that we could contend. That momentum carried into our second event, where we not only made playoffs again but also won the engineering inspiration award and made it to the finals. That moment was truly the most memorable of my entire 7 years in FRC, from scoring a 12 district point season to over 70 was truly awe inspiring

After qualifying for states, everything started to feel surreal. For a team that had never previously made playoffs, reaching that level in a single season was something I didn’t think we’d realistically achieve at the start of the year. But more than the results, what stood out was how the team changed. People stepped into leadership roles, rookies became contributors, and the overall culture shifted into something more confident and structured.

After seven years in FRC, this season felt like a full-circle moment. It wasn’t perfect in every way, and we definitely had our share of setbacks, but it ended in a way that made all the previous seasons feel worth it. I’m proud of what we built, and even more proud of the people who made it possible. I am happy to have been a part of this team, and I can't wait to see what they do in the future!