Glendale Prep’s Metal Masters Make History Heading to World Championship

Glendale Prep’s Metal Masters just made history by becoming the school’s first-ever state champions at the AIA State Robotics Championship. Dominating the field with five wins in six qualifying matches before an undefeated finals run, the team soared to a first-place finish. Now, they’re off to Houston for the elite FIRST Championship, where they’ll face over 300 international teams in the highest-level robotics contest on the planet.

This incredible achievement is the result of months of dedication, innovation, and teamwork. While the team is guided by Brian Roper, Glendale Prep’s robotics coach and physics teacher, he maintains that he is simply there to facilitate and provide guidance only when needed for the student-led teams.

The robotics season kicks off in August and runs through March, featuring three full-day competitions where teams from across Arizona face off in short, high intensity matches. Each year, the challenge changes, requiring teams to adapt and innovate as they construct a robot capable of completing a series of tasks.

“They are building a robot for about two to three months until November, where they actually have to compete against those teams to score as many points as possible and to do other kinds of smaller tasks where they have to present in front of judges about their design process,” Roper explained. It is during this presentation that the students stand before a panel of judges, explaining their successes, setbacks, and goals for improvement.

Junior Lex Bodzin, the mechanical lead for Metal Masters, develops the team’s designs in 3-D software and oversees construction. “Throughout the years I’ve learned a bunch of different skills such as prototyping things, machining things, and leadership roles,” he shared. Since joining the robotics program in seventh grade, Bodzin has found that being part of a team provided support and stability during challenging times after the pandemic

“The robotics team is at its core just learning how to use the design process, critical thinking, and always thinking about the future of the robot,” shared senior Gabi Le, the Outreach, Fundraising, and Documentation Lead for Unscheduled Disassembly, the academy’s second robotics team. “But in the end, it has to amount to something, and it has to amount to something in about two months.”

“I’ve coded the robot, and I also drive it,” shared Brennan Fahey, a Metal Masters teammate. “For me, it’s like I made my own video game, and now I get to play it,” he said, reflecting on everything he has learned from his experience, like coding, gear ratios, mechanical engineering, and software engineering. “It’s super fun.”

“You are part of a team, but you have to be able to work on your own still,” added Le. “You have to kind of take initiative at some point and have an ambition to improve and always be doing your best. Even if it fails at times, you [can’t] look at it as a failure, but as an opportunity to make it better.”

That mindset, shared by both robotics teams, paid off in a big way this season for the Metal Masters. Facing some of Arizona’s most competitive teams, they battled through a tough division to make the top four, earning the opportunity to choose a strategic alliance partner. That decision helped propel them to victory, ultimately securing the Arizona State Championship title and landing them a spot at the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas.

The FIRST Championship is a prestigious international event featuring teams from around the world, including competitors from Romania, India, and several African nations. Spanning five days of non-stop robotics action, Metal Masters will compete in multiple divisions, present to judges, and finally meet some of the global teams they’ve collaborated with online.

With Coach Roper guiding the team along the way, Metal Masters is now preparing to take on the world stage, ready to showcase their hard work, technical skills, and problem-solving abilities on an international level.

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