Bringing home the banner: Supercritical Seniors take home victory

Supercritical for the win! To round off their time as a robotics team at Overlake, team 16965 aka “Supercritical” took first place at the New England Premier Event! The team finished the two days of qualifications with a perfect 10-0 record and won all the playoff rounds in their division, setting a national match score point record of 421 points with no penalties during the playoffs. 

As the first-place finishers, they take home a trophy and the coveted orange banner. “That’s the goal. I’ve always wanted to leave one of these banners at Overlake,” Senior Steven H. shares. 

 The team is composed almost entirely of seniors, so this was the final competition for them as a team. As they reflected over their time together, they could really see the arc of their learning as they grew not only as a team but in their skills.  

“In the first year, we didn’t really know anything; we had a mix of parts, some bad sensors, Stephen had learned a bit of CAD, but all we really had was some basic coding knowledge,” remembers Senior Justin M. when the team was just starting out. They didn’t expect to do well, “but somehow and with a little luck, we made it to state,” Justin M. (‘26) laughs. The state competition was held at the Amazon campus in Seattle and that inspired them to work harder. Justin continues to add, “making it to state and being able to go to the amazing venue at Amazon, we knew we wanted to do that the following year.”

Over time they gained knowledge, started dividing out work strategically and really streamlined their efforts as a team. 

“I think this year was really the culmination of our learning. After last year we worked hard to make a movement library that was more efficient and made our autonomous development much quicker. That really helped this year so we could focus on the game-specific elements,” says Justin M. (’26).

This year, the team really dug in and worked hard on their robot, affectionately nicknamed “Dozer”. Senior Dylan Y. shares, “at the end of every single practice we would always ask for more time. I feel like this year there was an increase in time and dedication and effort that we have all put in.”

And their hard work paid off. Senior Dianyi Y. has been a part of other robotics teams outside of Overlake and she shares that the team is, “one of the most unique teams in that they are very student-centered. Brian and David give us awesome opportunities and just let us make mistakes and explore. They don’t tell us the actual answer the moment we encounter a problem, but they guide us to find the solution.”

As the majority of the team is graduating, this is the last hurrah for this particular Robotics team, but there are several more teams working hard and getting excited to compete in the future. If you are interested in getting involved in Robotics, reach out to Brian Husted to find out more.