Jaybots FTC Robotics Team @ John Jay High School

Jaybots (FTC #16700) is John Jay High School's competitive robotics team participating in FIRST Tech Challenge — an international robotics competition where student teams design, build, and program robots to complete complex game challenges each season. I joined the team in my freshman year with no prior engineering experience, and over four years grew from a curious newcomer into the team's CAD Lead and Vice President. The team advanced to the New York State Championship multiple times and earned a spot at the FTC World Championship in 2025.

As CAD Lead, I was responsible for translating each year's game challenge into a functional robot design using OnShape. The design process began with strategic analysis of the game manual — identifying which tasks were highest value and which mechanisms were feasible within our build capabilities. From there I produced full robot assemblies including drivetrains, scoring mechanisms, and custom 3D-printed components. Close collaboration with the build team was essential: designs that looked elegant in CAD sometimes required significant iteration once fabrication began.

Taking on the VP role added a management and mentorship dimension to my experience. I coordinated team meetings, managed deadlines around competition season, ran CAD workshops for underclassmen, and helped newer members develop the skills to eventually own their own subsystems. Watching students I taught go on to lead the team themselves was one of the most rewarding parts of my high school engineering experience.