The VI Bots, St. Paul VI Catholic High School’s second-year robotics team, began the 2024–25 FIRST Tech Challenge season working out of a new lab equipped with parts and materials donated by a school family. The team competed in this year’s DECODE challenge, with competitions held in Roanoke in December and Alexandria in January.
The VI Bots are guided by a team of experienced coaches that includes PVI engineering teacher Tom Burkat, alumnus and former team member Paulo Korowajczuk Nader (’25), and former FTC competitor Nicholas Poole (’19). Along with student co-presidents Bryce Gaskill (’27) and Lucas Ojeda (’27), the coaches lead about 40 students from all levels of PVI’s engineering classes. The club typically meets three times a week, including once during the school day as part of the school’s new Panther Time program.
Each September, a new FIRST Tech Challenge is announced, and teams immediately begin designing, building and coding their robots. The VI Bots kicked off the season with an interest meeting to watch the challenge reveal, livestreamed on YouTube, and began brainstorming strategies to meet the objectives.
“The first meeting of the season is my favorite part of coaching this team,” said Burkat. “In a few hours, students go from being strangers to rallying around a design with new friends they’re making for life.”
FTC matches are run in a 2v2 matchup of red and blue alliances, playing against teams run by schools and other community groups.
Each match lasts 2 minutes and 30 seconds, broken up into phases of Autonomous, where the robot follows pre-coded instructions, and TeleOp, where drivers control the bot using game controllers to drive around the field and score points. After each team plays in five qualification matches, the top six ranked teams pick their alliance partners to compete in playoffs, with hopes of advancing to district championships.
Last season, the VI Bots competed in two qualifiers. At the Washington qualifier, they took home eighth place out of 23 before being selected for playoff matches. They also received a “Most Worthy Challenger” trophy from a fellow team. At their second qualifier in Haymarket, the VI Bots beat their personal best, twice.
“The most rewarding part of a qualifier is seeing our team come together under stressful conditions and help other teams and each other,” said co-president Gaskill.
This season, the team takes on FTC’s DECODE challenge, as they develop new mechanisms and strategies to score points. The game involves collecting and shooting wiffle balls into red or blue team goals on each side of the 12×12-foot field.
Outreach efforts, including a live robot demonstration on Grandparents Day, a club fair booth, and a presentation at a school Business Partner Coffee, have helped the team grow significantly, with nearly 50 students interested at the initial sign-up.
This year, students formed three groups, with each building and coding a robot to compete against each other. To fund these new groups and the growth of the team, the VI Bots secured sponsorships from two local companies: Northstrat Inc. and Equilibrium Technologies. The contributions helped cover registration fees, new parts, the season’s game field and team t-shirts. Northstrat also provided mentorship, offering guidance on organizing the groups for robot development.
The team’s highest-scoring robot, “Straty Jr.,” represented the VI Bots at their first qualifier in Roanoke, while the other two robots were used to simulate real matches in preparation for the Alexandria event.
Straty Jr. was selected by the #5 ranked alliance captain to partner up for the playoff matches. The team also earned second place for the Connect Award, which recognizes teams for their goals in developing team skills, and for their efforts to build connections within the broader engineering, science, and technology community.
Students have learned many real-world skills as part of the team, from hands-on building to strategy, Java programming, 3D modeling and outreach.
“The hardest thing I had to learn was that not every idea will make the final cut for one reason or another,” said Aidan Branly (’28), who joined the team this season.
“I think that one of the biggest lessons students learn is that the best design is the simplest one that works. It’s important, and really fun, to brainstorm all sorts of wild ideas early in the process, but it’s also important to have the discipline to cut away unnecessary parts and simplify,” said Burkat.
Competition is already heating up in the VI Bots lab as students work to determine which robot will represent the team at the January qualifier in Alexandria.
