Most students get to spend four years on their high school robotics team.

Concord High School senior Laura Lorenze credits her father with buying her an extra two.

As a seventh grader in 2019, Lorenze’s father dragged her to an outreach event for the Concord High team, Tidal Force. Lorenze, who had already dabbled in robotics in middle school, was hooked.

“I joined from there and I was a heavy part of the team,” she said in an interview this week.

Over the last six years, Lorenze has steadily risen through the 20-member team’s ranks, from apprentice, to team lead, to assistant captain, to finally co-captain this year.

As Tidal Force and several other teams in the Concord area gear up for their next major competition of the season this weekend, Lorenze has lofty aspirations for her final year. 

“My goal is to go to districts,” Lorenze said. 

To qualify, the team needs to score highly enough at its two regular season competitions – the first in Salem on Saturday and Sunday, and the next a couple weeks later at the University of New Hampshire. Tidal Force last qualified for the New England district championship in 2023, but their robot was too damaged to participate, Lorenze said.

In the high-intensity world of FIRST Robotics, this weekend will serve as the first real test of the work teams across the region have put in over the last two months. In addition to Tidal Force, the competition will include The Big Red out of St. Paul’s School, MV roboPride out of Merrimack Valley High School, Blood, Sweat and Gears out of Kearsarge Regional High School, Tornadoes out of Franklin High School, and Ov3R1y K0Mp13X out of Dunbarton.

Up the road from Concord High, some two dozen students at St. Paul’s School were making final preparations to their robot on Wednesday afternoon.

Clara Tcherepnin, a junior at the boarding school from Duxbury, Massachusetts, joined the team two years ago following a fall cross-country injury that relegated her to crutches.

The experience on the team – which is offered both as a course and an after-school club at St. Paul’s – has led Tcherepnin to hone in on an academic focus.

 “I was interested in engineering as a freshman, but I wasn’t really sure what kind,” she said. “And I think robotics has helped me a bit to narrow it down that I’m more interested in the mechanical side of things.”

On both Concord teams, students break up into various sub-focus groups, which include mechanical, wiring, driving and programming. St. Paul’s team even has a group called “lawyering,” which ensures the group is in compliance with FIRST Robotics’ many rules.

The heart of the season stretches from January – when the year’s theme is unveiled – through April, when the world championship is held in Houston.

This year’s “Reefscape” theme had been long-awaited, according to the Concord High team.

“It’s like a whole meme within the FIRST community – just talking about ‘water’ game,” said Tidal Force junior Veronica Galdieri as she re-connected wires on the robot.

After the theme and rules are released, teams focus on developing a strategy to maximized scoring. The St. Paul’s team, for example, decided to build a robot that focuses on placing “corral” on the reef rather than taking “algae” off it.

The competitions themselves are a raucous affair which have various stages and include collaboration with other teams.  

The immersive experience that is FIRST Robotics combines the technical aspects of engineering with skill development in fundraising, leadership, and recruitment.

Lorenze said her time on the team has transformed her.

“I was a very anxious person when I started the team. I was very shy; I did not know anybody,” she said. “But honestly with the kind of people that we have and getting pushed into leadership sophomore year, it really helped my leadership skills grow so I was comfortable enough to be captain this year.

“Now I enjoy directing people and saying, ‘Alright this is the plan for to day,’” she said.

Lorenze, who has participated in Concord High’s career and technical education program through CRTC, hopes to start at a construction management company after graduating high school this spring.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted jmargolis@cmonitor.com.