Last month, the Steel Hawks launched the 2026 season with an annual kickoff event. The kickoff was from 9:30am to 9pm on a Saturday. It started in rooms 642 and 643 where veterans and rookies had breakfast with each other and gathered to engage in team build exercises.

“We did something new right before kickoff where we got some Easter eggs and paper clips and whoever could build the highest Easter egg tower would win a whole box of sour patch kids. It allowed me to meet new veterans and rookies and was one of my favorite parts,” sophomore Robert Indart said.

After these team building exercises, the Steel Hawks met in the auditorium to watch a video that revealed this year’s competition and rules. Then, they read through the competition’s manual in subteams to better understand it.

However, senior Kelly Vu, this year’s president of robotics, noted that it was challenging when members were reading the manual. She said, “I think the biggest challenge we faced was keeping 100+ students engaged during the first reading of the game manual. It is a really lengthy manual, and I found it difficult to grab the attention of everyone.”

After reading through the manual, members broke off into discussion groups. These groups aimed to have members “talk about aspects of the game and present to the team,” Kelly said.

Robert said, “[the rookies] all had really good ideas about what they wanted to do because everybody was made to work in a group that focused on a specific section of the robot.”

Junior Dylan Wang, head of the programming sub-team, said “A lot of the rookies and veterans this year actively participated in prototyping and perfecting themselves on game rules. I had a lot of great strategy discussions this year where many members brought up some ideas that we were either too scared to or not willing to try in the past years.”

Similarly, head coach Joel Heitman said he likes listening to student discussions about the game. “I definitely love watching the release of the new game each year. The challenges that we could face in it, the thoughts that immediately start going through my mind about how we could tackle this problem or that problem,” he said.

After having dinner together at school, all members of the team also worked together to better understand the game by playing a simulated version of it. Junior Harrison Zhu said, “At the end of the day we played this sort of  ‘human robot’ game which is basically the new game that was released except instead of 6 robots on the field, it’s 6 humans acting as robots instead.”

Sophomore Yuze Liu added “I liked that we stayed for a long time and had a lot of fun with friends. I also enjoyed having to teach the new rookies that are on the team and explain the game and rules to them.”

Sophomore Gabriella Hartman said she also enjoyed being able to hang out with others for a long time, “but I also think the hours are kind of grueling,” she said.

“The kickoff is essential because you are starting to see how everything will fit together and the rookies get to see the exact same thing the veterans are seeing for the first time. So now everybody is sort of on the same page where although the veterans might have more knowledge base because they’ve done it more years,” Mr. Heitman said.