By Mark Laginess, president
Tiger Robotics Booster Organization
The Van Buren Public School Robotics Teams capped off their 2025-26 season on Saturday with a banquet to honor and recognize the great work done by team members at all levels throughout the school year.
This year’s FIRST Robotics season, called FIRST “Age” and sponsored by Qualcomm, employed an archaeology theme for all levels of competition and engaged teams in activities related to discovering and preserving the past.
FIRST LEGO League Challenge and FIRST Tech Challenge teams participated in their season’s main competitions in the fall of 2025.
Tiger Robotics Booster Organization hosted a FIRST LEGO League Challenge event at Belleville High School for 36 teams from around southeast Michigan which included four fourth grade groups from Edgemont, Rawsonville, Savage, and Tyler Elementary Schools as well as five fifth and sixth grade teams from Owen Intermediate School.
One of the Owen teams, Owen Orange, also participated in the FIRST In Michigan state event last December at Mason High School in Mason, MI. The McBride Middle School seventh and eighth grade team, Team 14670, the TerrorBytes, competed in two FIRST Tech Challenge events, the Ann Arbor Qualifier at Forsythe Middle School and the Metro Detroit Tournament at Wayne County Community College District in Van Buren Township.
At the FIRST Robotics Competition level, the Bellevillains of Team 6615 from Belleville High School followed two strong district showings, one at Milford and one in Belleville where they took home the winner’s banner, with a trip to Saginaw Valley State University for the third straight year, competing as part of the top 160 teams in the FIRST In Michigan District State Championships.
Playing on the Aptiv-sponsored field, the team finished 12th after qualifying matches, their highest qualifying finish ever at the state event. That finish and alliance selections by higher-seeded teams put the Bellevillains in position to become an alliance captain for the playoffs, a first for them at the state level.
They selected teams from Brighton and Grosse Pointe Woods as their Alliance 8 partners. While Alliance 8 lost their first match to Alliance 1 teams from Lapeer, Auburn Hills, and Jackson, they won their second-round match against Alliance 4, sending groups from Fremont, Romeo, and Iron River home before losing a third-round match to Alliance 3 squads from Detroit, South Lyon, and Essexville, ending their state run.
Still, their state championship performance placed them 53rd overall in the state, four spots better than the prior year’s finish. This led to their third consecutive invitation to the world championships in Houston, TX, in late April where, despite consistently high scoring performance, they finished 51st out of 75 teams in the Curie Division and were not selected to compete in the playoffs, ending their season.
In the last official FIRST competition for VBPS teams, two groups of third graders from Edgemont and one each from Tyler and Savage vied for awards in the FIRST LEGO League Explore “Vector Villains” event at Belleville High School on May 9 just prior to the season banquet.
Both Edgemont teams and the Savage team took home “Team Model” awards for the way they approached their robot model, while the Tyler team scored the “Coding” award for their work in programming their robot to perform specific tasks related to the archaeology-based challenge.
Reflecting on the season at the banquet, coaches thanked their teams and congratulated them on their fine efforts, recognizing them with certificates. The high school team coaches also awarded varsity letters to Bellevillains team members who qualified for them, and in a memorable way, honored individuals with creatively titled awards for their unique contributions to the overall success of the team.
Especially recognized were seniors Austin Gaston, Mikaylyn Griffin, Alexis Champagne, Keith Duke, Madalynn Smith, Ethan Sulea, Noah Ridgeway, Allie Horchem, and Braylon Prince.
The 2026-27 FIRST season has already been announced as FIRST “Canopy,” a bio-diversity theme for which more details about specific challenges will be revealed as each level’s season commences, beginning with FLL Challenge and FTC in late summer.
The Van Buren Public School Robotic Teams wish to thank all of their supporters, sponsors, and donors who helped make this season a memorable and successful one.