Tales from the Crow's Nest

FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) is a global robotics competition where student teams design, build, and program a robot to play a brand-new game every season. Teams are judged on more than matches alone — engineering process, teamwork, and community outreach count just as much. FTC sits alongside FIRST LEGO League and FIRST Robotics Competition under the FIRST umbrella.

We are a rookie FTC team from Hawke's Bay, New Zealand — team number 37060. We are a crew of students who love building, coding, and engineering, held together by a shared love of robots and an even bigger love of pirate puns. The ship set sail in July 2026.

Each season runs from the game reveal in September through competition season in the summer. The crew moves through a familiar rhythm: studying the rules, designing the robot, building and wiring it, writing the code, then endless rounds of testing and iterating. Along the way we keep an engineering notebook that tells the whole story of the build.

We compete at the National Championship in Hastings, New Zealand — our team goes straight there, no qualifying events in between. Since it is home turf for us, there are no travel costs to worry about. Along the way we also run demos and outreach in the Hawke's Bay community.

Sponsors and supporters help pay for parts and entry fees — and we would love to have you on board. Since we head straight to nationals on home turf, travel costs are not a worry. Reach out through the contact page and we will talk charters and treasure maps.