FIRST Robotics Team Captain

Overview

Took over as Team Captain of an FRC team that had been reduced to 4 members by the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuilt it into a 40+ member program. Responsible for recruiting, team structure, budget, and competition strategy.

What I did

• Rebuilt the team — recruited from 4 members to over 40, introducing 60+ Sage Hill students to engineering fields through outreach and programming
• Competition results — guided the team to an 8th of 48 placement at the Orange County Regional
• Budget management — managed a $19,000 operating budget, overseeing accounting and finance for parts, registration, travel, and tooling
• Project management — implemented workflow and coordination systems to keep a 40-person team synchronized through build season
• Cross-team collaboration — worked directly with teammates across mechanical, electrical, and software subteams to coordinate integration

Prior role — Design Lead

Before becoming Captain, served as Design Lead from August 2020 to August 2023. Mentored a group of 2–6 members, developed the team’s solution-seeking workflow, and applied a creative design ethos within the team’s manufacturing constraints, often identifying workarounds when the ideal part wasn’t available or buildable.

What I learned

How to build something from almost nothing. Going from 4 members to 40 required recruiting, retention, and rebuilding a culture that had been disrupted by the pandemic — none of which is an engineering problem. Managing $19,000 taught me how to allocate resources against competing priorities, which turns out to be the same skill as managing a design budget under load constraints.