A Waterloo high school and a Breslau high school were among 30 teams competing in the annual FIRST Robotics Competition on Saturday.
The 2025 University of Waterloo FIRST Robotics Competition is an event where students from high schools across the province go head-to-head in hopes to qualify for the world championships in Houston, Texas.
“This is part of a larger program from (grades) K to 12,” said FIRST competition manager William Neal. “Today, we have grade 9 to 12 students doing a competition with dishwasher-sized robots that they have been making, designing and iterating over the last few months, starting in the first weekend of January.”
FIRST, an acronym for ‘For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology,’ is a global nonprofit aiming to provide inclusive, team-based robotics programs for pre-kindergarten to grade 12 students, according to their website.
“It’s quite clear that this is purposeful, life transforming and it’s an activity that opens up opportunities that are unparalleled in any other activity that I have seen,” said Neal.
The first alliance in the competition, formed by the captain team, Team CyberCavs 4678 from Woodland Christian High School in Breslau, Ont., who picked Team DAVE 3683 from St. David Catholic Secondary School in Waterloo and Team ALD Lions 9263 from Aldershot School in Burlington, Ont. to play alongside them. These three schools were the ones to beat a world record on Saturday. Although, they didn’t just beat one.
“At this event, we’ve been able to set the world record twice with the same score 249 unpenalized,” said Eden Dietz, a robotics student on Team DAVE.
Neal said the world record previous to Saturday’s event was 240 points, which the first alliance was able to surpass twice.
Team CyberCavs placed first, with Team DAVE not too far behind in second.
This win set its own world record, with Team CyberCavs ranked 9th and Team DAVE ranked 4th in the world.
“It takes a lot of collaboration and cooperation and community building. This is a ‘coopertition,’” said Neal. “And together the teams of Ontario have raised the bar. We are very fortunate that today we have two of the top ten in the world who, when they play together, tend to break world records.”
How the competition works
Dietz explained that preparing for a competition like this can take 20 to 35 hours a week. She said her team dedicated four days weekly to building the robot, preparing a drive team and pit crew, practicing for competitions and adjusting their robot to align with the tasks it needs to complete.
The teams are given notice of what tasks their robot must complete in advance, allowing them to practice matches around a month beforehand.
Saturday’s match involved a reef-like structure in the centre of a field that teams must have their robots throw a PVC pipe onto. The robots must then take a blue ball, representing algae, off the top of the reef and score it into a net. Each task the robot completes successfully garners points for the two alliances facing off in each match.
Dietz said being a part of an event like this is a great experience.
“This isn’t one of the events that gets [as] much attention as other events in, like, California and Texas,” said Dietz. “It’s just amazing to see all these local teams. They’re so good. It’s just so competitive and fun and I wish all the events could be just like this.”
All of the 30 teams participating play in two similar events before the top 100 teams in the province are determined and invited to the FIRST Ontario Provincial Championship in Toronto from April 2 to 5.
