The Whitehall High School "RoboSharks" robotics team has kept getting better since the last time it reached the state meet in 2019, said coach Jen Jura - and ironically, that improvement is why it took until this year for the team to return.
Jura explained that at qualifying competitions, teams form alliances in a schoolyard-style draft based on team rankings, and in past years Whitehall, often a middle-of-the-pack team in the state rankings, would show enough strength to be picked by higher-ranked teams later in the draft. Since teams in alliances are all awarded points based on performance, that sometimes resulted in the Whitehall team getting points that other teams had a lot to do with earning.
"In 2019, we got picked by the first alliance during the state finals, which got us enough points to go to the world finals (in Houston)," Jura said. "We got carried on the coattails a little bit there."
Those days are over for the Whitehall RoboSharks, who reached the April 16-18 state meet in Saginaw, the first time they've been there since 2019. While the team didn't reach the world finals this time around, they got something maybe even sweeter - the Sustainability Award from the state finals, which recognized the program for its efforts building from the high school down to the youth ranks. The middle school team also won the same award at the district level.
"The Team Sustainability Award celebrates a team which has developed sustainable practices that focus on a 'triple bottom line,' People, Prosperity, and Planet, to have a positive impact and achieve long-term continuity," reads, in part, a release about the award.
No doubt the growth of robotics teams in the White Lake area was a major factor in the award. Montague now has a high school team, which Jura said the Whitehall group helped get going, and both Whitehall and Montague have middle school teams. The growth at the youth levels, where the two schools co-op, has been exponential even within the last year. Jura said there were six robotics teams at the elementary level in fall 2024, a number that exploded to 14 this past fall.
"We've really been trying to build the program, and that's the leadership of the high school team," Jura said. "We had a festival this fall for the elementary teams and a scrimmage for the upper level teams. We're mentoring a team from Shelby, and we've helped out some other teams at a scrimmage we went to this spring for high school teams. We're trying to do good things for our community."
The sustainability award was a fine honor already, but in addition, Whitehall had self-satisfaction in its performance this season. The RoboSharks racked up points in qualifiers this year not because other teams "carried" them, but because of their own robot's performance.
"You get 12 qualifying rounds, and after the first event we were in fifth place, which led to us being captain of the fourth alliance," Jura said, explaining the process. "That's not being picked by anyone else, that's just us having peak performance because we built a great, functioning robot. In our second qualifier, in Muskegon, we finished in second place and were captain of the second alliance for the finals."
Each year FIRST Robotics, the organization administering these events, devises a theme for the competitions. This year's theme, Rebuilt, combined elements from the past 15-plus years of competitions.
The game teams played this year, Jura said, involved robots collecting 'fuel cells,' which are about the size of a dodgeball, and 'shooting' them into a hub.
"This game seemed simple compared to other years' games, as far as the functioning of it," Jura said.
Part of the reason for the team's success this year, oddly enough, was that it spent less time planning. In past years, Jura said, the team would plan and plan and plan when building its robot, so much so that when the time came for its first match, it would often still be making tweaks.
This year, though, when first meeting in January, the team did "more jumping in and trying stuff," Jura said. That gave the RoboSharks more time to react to the results of "trying stuff," letting the students use the engineering parts of their brains to come up with solutions to what they were seeing rather than hoping to get it just right the first time.
"The programming and the drive team could try out all the different functions of the robot earlier in the season, then have more time to make changes and dial things in so we had a better functioning robot when we go out for our first match," Jura said.
It worked; the team essentially had a fully-functioning robot and a plan when the time came for its first match in mid-March. Because the team's qualifying competitions were in weeks two and three of a five-week stretch, it was a long wait to learn if the RoboSharks had earned enough points to qualify for state; they knew from past years that their point total was right around the usual cutline.
They made it, though, and the 2026 season proved to be a triumph for the students, who, Jura said, do all the legwork when it comes to constructing and perfecting the robot.
"The mentors sit back, answer questions and basically make sure no one gets hurt," Jura said.
It helps that the team has ample support from the district. Jura said she alerted district staff that the team may qualify for state well in advance, and staff was happy to set aside the $4,000 it costs to compete at state. Jura herself found Airbnb locations that offered free cancellation, just in case. Through district support and community sponsors, Whitehall students face fewer difficulties than many when it comes to finances.
"A huge shout-out to Whitehall District Schools for being so financially supportive of us," Jura said. "I've talked to so many schools whose students have to pay (to go to state) because their schools don't chip in."
If the youth program's growth this last fall is any indication, the RoboSharks will continue to succeed in future years.
"At state, we proved that we're doing great things with our K-12 program to promote STEM education," Jura said. "That's our motto - 'Changing lives one robot at a time.'"
