Wycombe Abbey Robotics Team Qualify for the FTC UK National Championship
23 March 2026 - Co-Curricular
We are proud to share that our School Robotics Team, ‘WCC’, recently achieved success at the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Regional Qualifier held at Oxford High School.
Vivienne (LVI) shared her experience:
‘As a team, we ranked first overall, qualified for the UK National Championship this April at the Copper Box Arena in London and were honoured to receive the prestigious Inspire Award. In addition, we were also selected for the Finalist Alliance, making the experience even more rewarding.
The FTC is an international STEM competition in which students design, build and programme robots to complete a themed game challenge. Since September, we have worked non-stop through the full engineering cycle: analysing the game, devising driving strategies, prototyping mechanisms, testing designs, writing code for both autonomous and driver-controlled periods and documenting our progress through our portfolio.
Alongside this, we have also engaged in various outreach, including two sponsorships and boba tea sales to raise money for our school charity: ‘Build on Books’. Last week, we also hosted pupils from Highworth and led a robotics class where we introduced programming using Microbit and also shared the design process of our robot.
The Inspire Award is the highest accolade in the competition, awarded to teams that demonstrate excellence across all areas of engineering and teamwork. Receiving this award was especially meaningful to us as it reflects not only our technical efforts but also our commitment to outreach. To quote our chaplain, Padre Paul: ‘In true style our robotics team prepared, planned for and competed in the robotics competition. In true grace, they thought of others throughout and gave time also to charity.’
As we prepare for the National Championship, we are continuing to refine our robot’s performance and strengthening our engineering portfolio and pit presentations. Nationals will bring together some of the top teams from across the UK, and we are excited for the opportunity to compete at a higher level and learn from others.
We are incredibly grateful for the support we have received and look forward to representing Wycombe Abbey at Nationals. A special thanks must go to Padre Paul and Mr Joyce who have kindly helped us organise all of our outreach activities.’
Well done to our fantastic Robotics Team. We wish you the best of luck at Nationals!
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