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Coconino High School (CHS) hosted a regional FIRST robotics competition Friday, with teams from across the United States bringing competitors they'd designed and built themselves to Flagstaff for the tournament.

FIRST -- or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology -- is a global robotics nonprofit.

The Arizona North Regional, held in the CHS gymnasium, lasted most of the day on March 14 and 15. 

The competition's theme and the tasks the robots need to be able to complete change each year. This year’s game is called "Reefscape" and involves manipulating sections of PVC pipe (representing coral) and large inflatable balls (representing algae) around a metal structure designed to resemble a reef. The goal is to place the coral onto poles sticking out from four different levels of the reef and remove the algae from the ecosystem by throwing it into a net suspended over the center of the court.

The structure is set up on both sides of the court, with teams of three robots working together to complete the objectives on each side.

CHS senior Elena Klopfenstein explained that FIRST events are designed to encourage “cooperation,� as each round includes these alliances of three teams, so any team could be working with or competing against each other in different matches. 

“It builds this environment,� she said. “We all want to help each other, we all want each other to succeed because we could all be working together.�

CHS’s robotics squad Team 2486, the CocoNuts, currently has 21 members. According to a flyer made by junior Riyana Patel for this event, the team includes 15 finalists for the FIRST Dean’s List and one winner and seven seniors, who have been offered a total of over $1 million in scholarships.

A total of 43% of the CocoNuts are female, 40% are minority students and 33% will be first-generation college students.

The CocoNuts joined the FIRST Robotics Hall of Fame last spring after winning the Impact Award at the 2024 World Championship.

The CocoNuts had designed and built its robot, called Leonardo da Pinchy, in six weeks with this task in mind. Members began by building a wooden prototype for the programmers to understand the robot’s mechanisms, then machined the parts for the final robot, constructed and programmed it.

The robot has a piece that funnels the coral pipes into its elevator, then to a dual-scoring mechanism that can pull the algae balls off the reef, throw them into the net and place the coral pipes on all four levels. It also has an algae mechanism on its front that can score the balls either low or high.

“We’ve been continuously making some small improvements as we notice things and just testing what’s working,� said Patel, who is on the Impact Team and also helps with the build portion (repairing the robot between matches).

Patel was the drive coach for this tournament as well, helping the drivers with navigating the field.

Early Friday afternoon, a group of the CocoNuts was busy repairing the robot to prepare for an upcoming match, because Da Pinchy had collided with another team’s robot during the previous match, crumpling one of its intakes.

“They had to hammer it out, replace some shafts to make it work properly again,� explained senior Connor Norris, whose role on the team includes leading the programming efforts. He also helps with the build portion and is one of the robot drivers.

The team had been doing “very well� so far, Norris said, adding that they were one of the top scorers in this competition. Patel agreed, saying that the previous day’s practice match had also gone well.

Klopfenstein is also on the CocoNuts Impact Team, which she explained helped with the setup for the weekend’s competition -- the first held at CHS. They placed water bottles and hand sanitizer beneath each team’s desk and helped run the concession stand throughout the event.

Supporting science education

The CocoNuts are involved in community outreach as well as robotics, hosting annual STEM fairs at Leupp and Killip elementary schools, supporting teams across the Navajo Nation through its RezBotics program and taking part in state and national advocacy for STEM education. This work is led by students on the Impact Team, though every team member assists in some way.

According to the event flyer, the team has had 20 outreach events in the past year, involving 940 combined hours of work from CocoNuts and reaching more than 25,000 people.

“I think one of our biggest things probably is our love for STEM and our ability as high school students to get out into the community, and bring kids of all ages into it,� Patel said. “We do a lot of work on the reservation, and that's pretty cool. � It's very hard to get access to STEM, and FIRST is great opportunity for it. So it's cool that we’re able to do that as high school students.�

In May, team members will be part of the 2025 Arizona Advocacy Conference to meet with state legislators to advocate for education policies. As a result of the 2024 conference, CocoNuts had been given $30,000 in funding over the next three years from the Arizona Department of Education. 

Members of the CocoNuts have traveled to Washington, D.C., for the national advocacy conference each year since 2022, contributing to the passage of both the CHIPS Act and Every Student Succeeds Act. Klopfenstein said the CocoNuts was the only team from Arizona in attendance at the national conference, and that the team is working to get others from the state to join.

The CocoNuts also helped start a new robotics initiative on the Navajo Nation last year called RezBotics. They worked with teachers at schools across the reservation to start 16 new teams -- which competed in the regional qualifier at Diné College also started last year as a part of this effort.

The Navajo Nation is now its own region for FTC robotics, meaning that it will send two teams to the world championships each year. Two RezBotics teams made it to worlds last year, and two went to premier events.

Klopfenstein helped start Rezbotics last year, and said it was her favorite initiative to be a part of.

“For most of these teams, they’re hours apart � the nearest Home Depot or hardware store is almost three hours away. This is why Rezbotics is so important, because there’s not that much STEM opportunity out there,� she said.