Los Alamos High Robotics Team Advances to Texas District Championships

Project Y, Los Alamos High School Team 4153, earned a place in the FIRST in Texas District Championships after a spring run that pushed its robot, J. Robot OppenHopper, through Fort Worth and Amarillo and into championship-level play. The team finished second overall at the March 19-21 Fort Worth district event after being selected by the top alliance in playoffs, then added enough district points at the April 2-4 Amarillo Civic Center event to qualify for Houston on April 16-18.

Fort Worth was the turning point. Team 4153 ranked 16th in qualifications with a 4-8 record, but the robot’s performance and the students’ strategy were strong enough to land a playoff invitation from the top alliance. The team left Fort Worth with 37 district points, including points from qualification, alliance selection, playoff performance and awards, and also earned the Imagery Award for cohesive branding. In the FIRST district system, that kind of all-around showing matters as much as one strong match.

For Los Alamos, the run is more than a trophy case story. Project Y is part of the engineering pipeline that connects Los Alamos High School to the county’s broader technical culture, where coding, mechanical design, computer-aided drafting and fast-turn problem-solving all mirror the work habits used in regional science and engineering careers. The season begins in January and compresses months of learning into a competition schedule that demands travel, fundraising, and repeated redesign under pressure. Competing in Texas also means adapting to a larger district field and a system where every point can change a team’s season.

That depth shows in the program’s history. FIRST records list Project Y’s rookie year as 2012, with 15 seasons competed, 40 total events, 18 awards and two trips to the FIRST Championship. This year’s effort was backed by sponsors including ARM, The Gene Haas Foundation, Merrick, Dr. Krohn, Enterprise Bank & Trust, the Los Alamos Public School Foundation, NASA, N3B Los Alamos, ASME Northern New Mexico, Los Alamos Public Schools and the IEEE Los Alamos chapter. Mechanical lead Sebastian Koglin, CADmaster and robot driver Amelia Hill, and mentor Jim TenCate were also nominated for leadership honors, a sign that the program’s strength runs well beyond the machine itself.