The challenge for the 2026 FIRST Robotics competition was finally revealed, marking the beginning of weeks of work for the Little Apple Cyborgs.
The theme for this year’s competition is REBUILT. REBUILT focuses on reimagining the past and uncovering mysteries. It will teach competitors how to use past knowledge to benefit them in the future. It can also make competitors blend their new knowledge with their old, to possibly uncover new mysteries about their robot.
“They’ve [the team] thrown in aspects of previous games, so it’s like rebuilding from previous games,” assistant coach Jennifer Karr said. “Within the next two or three weeks, we’ll have our design really finalized, get the prototypes tested, really get building the official robot, and then do lots of testing.”
In this year’s competition, alliances of three teams compete against each other to collect and score Fuel into their respective Hubs. Each team has a tower on their side, which their robots can climb to gain extra points. In the first 15 seconds, called Autonomous, every robot must be fully preprogrammed. During the longest period, Teleop, point values are reduced to balance the extended duration of manual control. Finally, the Endgame offers substantial bonuses for teams successfully positioning multiple robots on their tower. This concluding segment generates intense competition drama, as teams fight to secure vital points before the match clock expires.
“I think this year, this game is going to be more strategy and driver dependent,” senior Mason Gish said. “We have struggled in those areas before, so that’s gonna be the most challenging part for us.”
The Little Apple Cyborgs hope to continue the success they strung together last season. In last year’s season, they won the Central Missouri regional, while also finishing in a strong seventh place at the Greater Kansas City Regional. In the Central Missouri Regional, Gish won the FIRST Dean’s List Finalist Award, which recognizes outstanding student leaders in robotics competitions. In the Greater Kansas City Regional, the team won the Rising All-Star award, showing how much they had improved from previous seasons. These achievements helped the team reach their first World competition.
“The quantity of game elements that we were working with last year was only maybe 100 total. This year it’s about 500, so we have 500 of the fuel balls that we have to work with around on the field,” senior Dawson Raw, president, said. “So it’ll be high capacity, trying to load in as many into our robot as possible, and shooting them out as fast as possible.”
In this year’s Robotics season, the Little Apple Cyborgs will attend the Oklahoma and Greater Kansas City Regionals, hoping to reach the World championships once again.
“This club is definitely unlike any other club at the high school,” Raw said. “We’re working with more students than the average club and definitely a lot more money than the average club.”