Major congratulations to our FIRST Robotics team, the Patribots (4738), who traveled to Houston to compete in the FIRST World Championships this past weekend. We were the only team from San Diego Unified to travel to Worlds and our team was amazing.

We placed 4th out of 78 teams in our division during the qualifying round and were the 3rd Alliance Captains, for which our kids did some impressive scouting and strategy work. We advanced all the way to the semi-finals, the 2nd furthest any San Diego team has ever made it in the FIRST Championships! Our robot is ranked 60th in the world out of 3286 robots –AND– we won the prestigious Imagery Award<https://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/frc/awards-based-on-team-attributes> for our field.

Shout out to Ms. Van Loan, Mr. Espinoza, our fantastic parents and mentors and the following phenomenal kids: Adam, Aidan, Alexander, Andrew, Benjamin, Emery, Emiliano, Emily, Gavin, Gus, Hadizah, Hollis, Jacob, Jeremy, Kyle, Mark, Noelle, Odin, Omar, Raquel, Ray, Rudy, Sean, Sky, Thadeus, Timothy, Travis, Ty and Will! And a huge thank you to our sponsors who make it happen! Qualcomm, DODSTEM, Natural Networks, Gene Haas Foundation, Solar Turbines, San Diego Unified CCTE, and Patrick Henry High School Foundation.

– Michelle Irwin is principal at Patrick Henry High School.