La Salle’s robotics team, Maker Industries, has made history. On Jan. 7 at a Rose City League Meet, the team broke a world record for most points scored without penalties, scoring 284 points. This feat was accomplished in close cooperation with another team, Overcharged.

That score is not only a world record, but it also helped thrust Maker Industries into the #1 spot for penalty-free matches in FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) events. This ranking is based on the match score itself rather than Maker Industries as a team. It is also different from general rankings because FTC events are teams made up of 7-12 graders, while other rankings include teams of all ages. Outside of FTC, Maker Industries as a team is ranked #4 in Oregon and #86 in the world.

Maker Industries’ secret to winning — in this case a world record — on Saturday was a little bit of luck and lots of teamwork. “What led to the record was some really lucky coordination and a strong teammate,” junior Roman Elliot said. “The robot’s battery was sitting at an optimal voltage so that the computer could control it properly and it didn’t behave erratically during driver-controlled.”

At robotics meets, there are very specific rules to follow and ways that the meet must run. All the teams play five matches, or games, and in those games, two teams join together to create an alliance in which they compete against another alliance. The opponents and alliance members are different for every game. At Saturday’s meet, Maker Industries played against Overcharged before they joined together to win the world record.

“When we were lined up to play with Overcharged — we’re both quite good teams — so it lined up in a way that we could score really high,” said junior and team captain Henry Cechini. After the game, the team knew right away that they had secured a state record, and they found out very quickly that they had also gotten, at the very least, a national record.

“We found a list of all the top scores, but we weren’t sure if it was national or if it was world,” Cechini said. “So we were just scrolling through looking at the locations just trying to find somewhere that wasn’t in the U.S. to show that there was a world record, and we finally found an Australian meet. So we knew that it was a world record and then we just all went crazy.”

Lukas Werner, who is the team’s mentor and a La Salle 2022 alumnus was also in attendance at the meet on Saturday. In regards to the team breaking the world record, he said, “It was wild seeing that, especially all the work that we’ve put in over the last week. We didn’t do anything over Christmas break, so it was kind of crazy.”

Cechini mentioned that the team had been really small in previous years, but this year they have a lot of new members and good team chemistry. “We’ve got a really strong coding team, we’ve got a really strong building team,” Cechini said. “We’ve worked together really well to create a really good robot, and especially just using our kind of limited resources compared to other teams.”

In spite of this newfound fame and success, Werner wants the team to stay humble. “Just because we got a win doesn’t mean we will continue to get that,” Werner said. “So we have to keep focusing, keep building new things on top because there’s always room for improvement.”

As for future meets, Maker Industries has a lot to look forward to. “We’ve got a couple tournaments coming up, and maybe going on to state will be exciting,” Cechini said. “I’m just looking forward to, especially next year…being able to do more impressive things with our robot.”

With a world record already in the bag, Maker Industries will have a chance of going onto this year’s national championship which will be held in Houston, Texas from April 19-22.

This story was originally published on The La Salle Falconer on January 11, 2023.