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 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’s primary build space became unusable due to a significant facility issue. This forced an immediate shift away from a stable, established workspace during a critical period of the season.

Losing access to a dedicated shop environment introduced several constraints:

Limited space for fabrication, assembly, and storage
Reduced access to tools and infrastructure
Increased setup and teardown overhead between work sessions

To continue operating, the team transitioned to a temporary workspace hosted in a mentor’s garage. While this allowed the season to continue, it required adapting workflows to operate in a more constrained, less controlled environment.

Rather than halting progress, the team adjusted by prioritizing organization, modular design, and tighter coordination between subteams. These constraints reinforced the importance of building systems that could be developed and iterated on efficiently, even under less-than-ideal conditions.

New Training Pipeline

The 2026 season was the first year the team implemented a structured offseason training program to better prepare students before the start of build season.

This included:

A formal mechanical design curriculum using FRCDesign.org
An in-house programming curriculum
Weekly assignments delivered through Google Classroom
Guided progression from fundamentals to applied subsystem work

The goal was to reduce the learning curve during build season by establishing baseline competency across disciplines. Instead of introducing concepts reactively, students entered the season with prior exposure to design processes, software architecture, and system integration.

This shift enabled: