PantheraTech - Journey
When four middle schoolers walked into their first FIRST LEGO League meeting this fall, none of them quite knew what they were getting into. Dia had come from Odyssey of the Mind hoping to build robotic vehicles. Aahana just loved building with LEGO. Maya and Avika were ready to try something completely new.
Fast forward a few months, and Team PantheraTech is headed to the New Jersey State Championship this weekend—one of only 80 teams advancing from over 250 competitors across the region.
The Journey: Snacks, Sushi, and Screaming with Joy
Ask the team what made this season memorable, and you’ll get answers ranging from the technical (“How precise you have to be with the bot, and how quickly you can mess up”) to the delicious (“Every day we would walk in and we would get a different snack!”).
The season started with basics, the team learnt sensors, motors, and the surprising complexity of what looked like simple block coding.
“I discovered coding is not as simple as it seems,” Dia admits. “You need a lot of dedication to get it done. We spent a long time after school learning it.”
For this year’s “Unearthed” archaeology-themed challenge, the team had to program their robot to complete 15 missions in just 2 minutes and 30 seconds—switching attachments multiple times while racing across the competition board. The precision required caught everyone off guard.
“How deeply you must understand your code and how much one tiny change can impact your robot’s performance,” Avika reflects on what surprised her most.
Breakthrough Moments
The team’s mantra became “Make rules and eventually break them and see what happens”, a philosophy that served them well when facing setbacks. And there were plenty.
Each failure taught them something new. Maya discovered the joy of mechanical problem-solving when she successfully completed a mission using gears, a moment that excited the entire team. Aahana found her strength in building. Avika learned that proper brainstorming sessions could crack seemingly impossible problems.
“Definitely code, when it goes wrong, it’s hard to get it back and right,” Aahana explains. “But once you get it, it feels good.”
Qualifying for States
At the North Jersey qualifier in November, Team PantheraTech competed against 23 other teams. They weren’t expecting much, just hoping to learn and maybe complete a few missions successfully.
Then came the awards ceremony. When they heard “Breakthrough Award” announced for their team, celebrating significant progress in confidence and capability, the screaming started.
“We screamed and jumped with joy,” the team recalls.
The award automatically qualified them for the State Championship, where they’ll face the best 80 teams from across New Jersey this weekend.
What They’ve Learned
Ask about the biggest lessons, and you get responses that sound surprisingly mature for middle schoolers:
“I learnt that life is hard, and robotics is harder, but fun,” says Dia.
“Learning how to stay focused. Learning how to work in pressure,” Aahana adds.
“Teamwork,” Avika states simply.
Maya learned to “stay focused and on task”, essential skills when you’re troubleshooting code at 6 PM on a school night or rushing to finalize your innovation project before a deadline.
The team bonded over sushi dinners after their qualifier and first scrimmage, shouting their rallying cry “Core Values!” and joking about “No Bo”, Coach Varun’s dog who occasionally made appearances during practice.
Championship Week: Stressed but Ready
This week, PantheraTech is in full preparation mode. They’re tweaking the robot design to make attachment switches faster, updating code to increase speed across the board, refining their strategy to squeeze in more missions, and getting final feedback from an actual archaeologist on their innovation project.
The yaw sensor, a persistent source of “lots of glitching” is finally behaving. The time pressure of completing up to 15 missions in 150 seconds feels slightly less impossible than it did in September.
When asked how they’re feeling about this weekend’s championship, the answer is honest: “Excited, but mainly stressed and nervous.”
But then someone adds their team motto: “We got this!!” And the cheers start again.
Looking Forward
All four team members want to continue robotics next year, though Dia adds a practical caveat: “Yes, but I need to get the time management for homework sorted out.” Avika has her own condition: “Yes, as long as I’m with the same people (~_~).”
For a first-time FLL team to make it to State Championship isn’t impossible, but it’s far from easy. It requires dedication, resilience, and the willingness to completely redo your trifold when it’s not quite right.
It also requires showing up after school to learn code, staying focused under pressure, and understanding that one tiny gear change can make your entire team jump with excitement.
Team PantheraTech learned all of that this season. This weekend in New Jersey, they’ll get to show what a breakthrough year really looks like.
The New Jersey State Championship takes place this weekend. Follow Team PantheraTech’s journey and their “Unearthed” innovation project as they compete against the state’s best FLL teams.
About FIRST LEGO League: FLL Challenge is a robotics competition for students ages 9-14 (grades 4-8) that combines robot game missions, an innovation project, and core values of teamwork and gracious professionalism.