Technology High School Robotics
An NRL Combat Robotics Team
Tech High Robotics was founded in 2001 as a FIRST robotics team. For 12 years, we continued competing in FIRST before changing to a M.A.T.E. ROV robotics team, and finally, after COVID, we regrouped as combat robotics team. In this time, hundreds of students have contributed to the planning, building, and operating of various bots for a multitude of competitions. See our history page for more information.
What We’ve Been Up To
- Success at NRL Nationals 2025!
Tech High and the Placer Robotics Teams 
Tech High Robotics Team Members Six of our Angular Aggression and REV3 team members competed in the National Robots League (NRL) Nationals event in Springfield, Ohio last weekend, and we did quite well! The event hosted thirty three teams, from Missouri to Texas, Pennsylvania to Ohio, Colorado, California, and more! Four of the teams were from California, as three of the other teams were the Placer Robotics Teams. At Sacramento Bot Battles, Angular Aggression got second after Lunar Eclipse, one of their bots.
Please note that this post contains a lot of images, since we wanted to show off the many awesome photos from the event.
Bracket for the Final 16 On Thursday, we flew from San Francisco to Columbus, Ohio, before making the 45 minute drive to Springfield. On Friday, we helped to set up the venue and completed safety checks, which went mostly without issue. We did have a motor issue with REV3, but one team member was able to drive to Michigan and back for replacement parts before Saturday’s competition. All in all, REV3 achieved fourth place while Angular Aggression made it within the top eight! Angular Aggression won once, lost once, won twice more, then lost for good (WLWWL), while REV3 won five times before losing twice (WWWWWLL). In this competition, each bot first fought three other bots, and the top sixteen bots were chosen to compete in a single elimination bracket.
Angular Aggression vs. Zeus 
Zeus, smoking Angular Aggression first fought Zeus, which has a vertical spinning disk. We won definitively, causing their bot to start smoking profusely. In the next match, however, we lost to Krankenwagen, a horizontal spinner. Unfortunately, we our design lacked enough weapon clearance with our chassis, so the sideways impact of the horizontal weapon caused our weapon to inflict damage on our own bot. We were also unlucky in that we got trapped in the gap between the arena kickplate and the wall, causing us to be stuck and therefore counted out. Luckily, we had ample time to repair from this fight before we fought the next bot, called Neil. We were frightened to fight Neil as their bot had a horizontal undercutter design, and we were worried that they would do the same thing to us as Krankenwagen did. Fortunately for us, we had no trouble knocking them around and preventing their weapon from every getting up to speed, resulting in a decisive win.
Above: Angular Aggression vs. Neil (Note the flying debris from Neil) 
Flipping Mount Crushmore 
In the final sixteen, we won against Mount Crushmore, another bot with a vertical spinner design. This didn’t cause any trouble, unlike our next opponent: Ronald Wreckin’. This bot, created by Bedford High School, would go on to win first place. We were initially successful with the first hit, but they recovered and caught one of our forks, flipping Angular Aggression upside down. In our attempt to self right, we hit the arena kickplate at 100% weapon speed, which instantly shattered our hardened steel weapon. As a result, our bot was decimated, and on top of that, our electronic speed controllers for the drive motors overheated as they were not getting cooled by the spinning weapon.
The Aftermath of the Ronald Wreckin’ Fight REV 3’s performance was just as amazing, especially since it won five of the seven fights it fought. The fight against Soup, which had a horizontal disk, was relatively uneventful. Next up was Lunar Eclipse, which was interesting to fight, since it uses a mechanism with two claws instead of a spinning weapon. Although it is an uncommon mechanism, it has been quite successful in the past. Indeed, it previously beat us and achieved first at Sacramento Bot Battles. This time though, we managed a win.
The next three fights were similarly successful, and REV3 repeatedly demonstrated its capability to rapidly disassemble other combat bots. In the second round of the Final 16, we won to Vega as we knocked off or knocked out several pieces of their bot, and particularly their battery, which is more or less an immediate loss for the bot whose battery is exposed. But against Executioner, another team from Placer Robotics in California, REV3 inflicted a hit that won it the knock-out punch award for the competition. As the saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words.
Executioner 
REV 3 + Executioner Group Photo Eventually, we lost drive when fighting the second place bot, A Different Animal, then lost to Dino due to more drive issues that stopped us from moving, landing REV 3 in fourth place.
As you’ve seen, the competition produced dozens of excellent photos. We were fortunate to have many photos taken by a professional photographer, in addition to our student photographer. There were also many others acquiring good footage of the event that has been uploaded online. Here are a few relevant links:
Tech High Robotics recap video:
Professional photographer’s page for this event:
https://recrphoto.pixieset.com/2025nrl/
Third party video with slow-mo footage:
https://youtu.be/d_Z8I7vLBgI
We again want to deeply thank our sponsors and all those who have donated to our team, as without them we would have never made it to nationals. We are also greatly appreciative of the event hosts and staff for smoothly and efficiently running this competition, and we wish every team the best of luck going forward. With that said, this competition wraps up the 2024-2025 season of robotics for us — we’ll be back in the fall!
