FIRST Robotics Competition team Valor 6800 and FIRST Tech Challenge team Exodus 30030 competed at the FIRST Championship in Houston on April 29-May 2. Valor won the Curie Division as the alliance captain, and the community team Exodus won the Lovelace Division and the da Vinci finals as the alliance captain. The Houston Championship marks the end of the FIRST Rebuilt season and students are already anticipating the next season Canopy.
Rebuilt 2026 season was Valor’s 10-year anniversary and so far the farthest the team has advanced. During the competition, the team has also received the Industrial Design award highlighting durability in design.
“I worked on designing our intake — the mechanism that takes the fuel off of the ground and into our robot — outside of our perimeter,” senior pit Captain Gabriella Ng said. “Throughout the season, I was focused a lot on trying to make it more durable.”
During qualification matches, Valor was ranked second out of 75 competing teams with a record of 14-1-0.
“This year, everyone in the pit is at their peak because all four seniors have the experience,” Ng said. “We know what to do, and we need to rely a lot less on our mentors.”
After the alliance selections, the team ended up picking Cheezy Poofs 254 from San Jose, California, Barker Greybacks 8613 from Sydney, Australia and MORE Robotics from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“We’ve picked Robonauts 118 at the FIRST in Texas District Championship, and then Cheezy Poofs at Houston Championship who is arguably one of the greatest teams of all time,” sophomore Match Recorder Arun Sagi said. “It felt good to say that we were not just riding off the coattails of other’s success; we are the success, and we are taking them along this year.”
Valor’s alliance ended up winning all of their matches in the division playoffs and finals, advancing to the Einstein Field for the Grand Final Playoffs. At the Einstein Field, they had a record of 2-2-0, finishing the Championship as the fourth best alliance in the world.
“It felt like everything we did for the last, for me, three years, but I think for most of the seniors, four years, was all worth it,” Ng said. “I just kept knocking on wood because we can’t screw this over, and when we finally got there, everyone was crying.”
Decode 2025 season was Exodus’ first season, though all of the students on the team are seasoned veterans.
“Exodus is a space for us to really use our skills to the best ability and really have the full creative freedom in robotics,” junior Sahana Pandey said. “We wanted each other to grow off each other, rather than being brought down by limitations.”
During qualification matches, Exodus ranked first out of 57 competing teams with a record of 9-1-0.
“We were ecstatic about winning divisions among thousands of people from all across the world,” Pandey said. “Being able to win the division was surreal in itself, and so we were just so grateful more than anything to have gotten there and worked with such amazing teams.”
After the alliance selections, the team ended up picking Velocity 21087 from Braila, Romania and OverClucked Bots 11228 from Zeeland, Michigan.
“We had a rivalry with OverClucked because we lost to them at the Texas State Cup, so we’re really hoping to get a rematch against them,” junior Owen Schaller said. “We started working with Velocity the day we got there; they broke in qualification matches, but they fixed themselves, and we picked them.”
Alliance 1 ended up winning all of their matches in the division playoffs and advanced to the da Vinci Field for the Grand Final Playoffs.
“We didn’t really go into it expecting to win anything, but after we won that first one, we realized that we’ve really got a chance,” Schaller said.
At the da Vinci Field, they had a record of 6-1-0, finishing the Houston Championship as the best alliance in the world.
“The grand finals were very stressful, a lot of ups and downs, but in the end, we pulled through,” Pandey said. “I think none of us has experienced something so electrifying because you just feel like you are in the moment and you can think of nothing else.”
According to Schaller, next year Exodus is looking forward to back-to-back wins.
“Next year, team goals are to do just as good as we did, or ideally even better than we did this year,” Sagi said. “Keep the momentum going, continue the cycle of teaching new rookies, get everyone ready, so that this isn’t just a period of dominance; it is something we can sustain for years to come.”
