2026 - Rebuilt

Overview

The 2026 season marked a full rebuild of Team 8324, both technically and organizationally. For the first time, the team implemented a structured offseason training program, combining external resources such as FRCDesign.org and Code Academy with an in-house programming curriculum delivered through Google Classroom. This shift established a more consistent foundation in engineering and software before the build season began.

At the same time, the season introduced significant logistical challenges. Due to a facility issue, the team’s primary build space became unusable, requiring a rapid transition to a temporary workspace. The team continued operations out of a mentor-hosted garage, adapting processes and workflows to operate under tighter physical and resource constraints. Special thanks to the Botwinik family for making this possible and ensuring the team could continue building and competing.

Within these conditions, the focus shifted toward improving subsystem reliability, simplifying design decisions, and increasing student ownership across engineering and operations. The goal was not just to compete, but to build a system capable of sustaining iteration under real constraints.

REBUILT

In the 2026 season of the FIRST Robotics Competition, teams competed in REBUILT, a challenge that reimagined past engineering concepts through modern design and strategy.

Matches were played by alliances of three robots working to score foam game pieces (“Fuel”) into field goals while navigating obstacles and coordinating with partners. Robots needed to intake, control, and rapidly score these game pieces while adapting to defensive pressure and changing match conditions.

In the endgame, robots climbed a multi-level Tower structure to earn additional points, introducing tradeoffs between scoring performance and mechanical complexity.

The game emphasized cycle efficiency, scoring consistency, and reliable climbing, rewarding teams that could execute under pressure rather than those with purely high theoretical capability.

REMY

A playful reference to our build space being overrun with vermin

Displaced Buildspace

During the 2026 season, the team lost access to its primary build space, requiring a full transition away from our established workspace.

This introduced several constraints:

Limited space for fabrication, assembly, and storage
Reduced access to tools and materials
Increased setup and teardown time between meetings

To continue operating, the team moved into a temporary workspace hosted in a mentor’s garage. While this allowed the season to continue, it required adapting to a shared living environment with additional constraints beyond the team’s needs.

In response, the team prioritized organization, modular design, and structured design reviews to make more effective use of limited time and space.

We are grateful to the Botwinik family for hosting the team throughout the season, and we look forward to returning to a dedicated build space in the future.

New Training Pipeline

The 2026 season marked the first implementation of a structured offseason training program to prepare students before the build season.

This program included:

A mechanical design curriculum based on FRCDesign.org
An in-house programming curriculum
Weekly assignments delivered through Google Classroom
Progression from fundamentals to subsystem-level application

The goal was to establish baseline competency across disciplines before the season began. Students entered the build season with prior exposure to FRC-centric design, software, and critical tools rather than learning these concepts for the first time under time constraints.

This shift resulted in: