The cafeteria bustles in an amalgamation of nerves and excitement as teams roll in tool and storage boxes mounted on hand trucks. Across the backs of t-shirts, designs feature circular logos embroidered with team numbers and names. The air buzzes with anxious chattering as representatives survey the competition, pen and paper in hand. “Do you have an auton?” they ask, referring to the 30-second autonomous period of the robot functioning solely on prewritten code. “How accurate, percentage-wise, would you say your outtake is?” Team members smile at each other sheepishly as they watch their success rates scribbled hastily on a piece of paper.
At the far end of the cafeteria lies a familiar setup: a gray padded arena outfitted with a red and blue field goal on each side, accompanied by purple and green pickleballs. In the center, robots flaunt custom metal parts and wheeled intake systems to score points, repositioning themselves to aim and shoot into their own colored goals.
FTC, or First Tech Challenge, is a global youth robotics competition presented to students of ages 12-18 that empowers young minds in the STEM field to create robots that compete in a new game released every September. This competition is sponsored by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a nonprofit organization that brings the world’s robotics and engineering to classrooms.
The 2025-2026 FTC game is DECODE, presented by RTX. In this archaeology-themed game, robots seek to score points by collecting purple and green plastic balls (artifacts) and shooting them into their own respective 3-foot alliance goals. To gain additional bonuses, teams may match their robot’s colored ball shooting order to the random three-artifact pattern selected at the start of the match.
Tenafly High School’s senior team, Bit by Bit #19477, and their rookie team, TigerBots #20848, have worked from early August until March for their competitions. Although the club formally meets twice a week, members spend countless hours during lunch and after school redesigning their robot and portfolios—creating endless iterations to perfect their performance.
At the forefront of the team stands Mr. Hubbard, the faculty advisor whose guidance has been instrumental in the club’s growth and success. His role as a mentor has ensured that all students are able to take the lead in engineering, design, and strategy.
“Our team has improved at an unbelievable rate throughout this year, and our stable and consistent gameplay allowed us to get selected and play additional elimination matches,” explained Daniel Han (’27), captain of TigerBots. Despite it only being their first season, TigerBots has proved themselves in winning four out of six matches, Han (’27) described as “far better than any of [their] previous competitions.”
Beyond the robot game, FIRST promotes values beyond building the robot through the second half of its competition. Coining terms such as “Gracious Professionalism” and “Coopertition,” FIRST promotes an outreach mindset to encourage the next generation of both engineers and innovators. At the competition, their outreach and build journeys are documented in a portfolio and accompanied by a brief presentation. From Boy Scout conventions to elementary school Hackathons and after-school programs, both teams have devoted themselves to spreading STEM to their local community.
On March 8th, the two Tenafly Robotics teams competed in their League tournament at Emerson High School. Bit by Bit was ranked in the fourth seed during the playoffs and placed 6th overall. Their captain, Noah Jackson (’26), reflected on his experience: “It was a great way to round off my senior year, and it’s been an amazing time meeting people and an even better one with this team.” Bit by Bit was also awarded the Innovate Award sponsored by RTX: an honor celebrating teams with the most “ingenuity, creativity, and inventiveness to make their designs come to life.”
As the season comes to a close, the team begins to look ahead to their future plans. Whether by returning to Mr. Hubbard’s engineering room, mentoring the next class of students, or pursuing STEM careers of their own, Tenafly’s robotics teams have built a foundation that extends far beyond the tournament floor.
