Youth Robotics Programs in DC, MD, VA - FIRST Rob

The Tech Turn Up team walked into the Geared Up Celebration at Virginia State University this May having never participated in a FIRST event before. The Celebration is designed exactly for this moment: a culminating showcase for our Geared Up rookie mentor cohort, low pressure by design, where new teams demonstrate what they have built and get paired with veteran teams to carry their growth into year two. Tech Turn Up's robot ran into coding issues. Functions failed. Supplies went missing. By the time they reached the final test round, the day looked nothing like they had imagined.

That is where most stories end. This one was just beginning.

When the Tech Turn Up team needed help, other teams stopped what they were doing and stepped in. People shared parts. People troubleshot the code. Students and mentors from teams Tech Turn Up had never met cheered them through every match. Our Vice President, Shelly Stoddard, told the team, "this is a family." The room proved it. Tech Turn Up walked away from that day not with a trophy, but with something more durable: the recognition that they belonged in this community, a veteran team mentor partnership to carry them into next season, and the confidence that this community would carry them.

That is the story your investment built this year. Not a single robot, not a single trophy, but a regional community of 493 teams, 10,235 students, and 1,748 mentors and coaches who show up for one another across Virginia, Maryland, DC, and West Virginia.

FY26 by the numbers

The 2025–26 season was the strongest in FIRST Chesapeake's history. Across 26 official competitions and dozens of community activations, we welcomed more than 46,000 attendees, mobilized 1,003 unique volunteers across the region, and recorded an estimated 18,912 volunteer hours valued at over $601,000 of donated labor. Our FRC program grew to 118 high school teams. Our FTC program reached 290 middle and high school teams, a 6.8% increase year over year. And our newly seeded FLL Explore program in Maryland served 85 elementary school teams, planting the earliest roots of the pipeline.

Student demographics continue to move in the right direction. Black and African American participation grew from 9% to 12% of registered youth, a three percentage point gain over FY25, reflecting deliberate expansion into the VSU STEM Hub service area and DC schools like Friendship Public Charter School and Phelps Architecture, Construction and Engineering. Our Women in STEM scholarship saw 45 applicants compete for four awards, the most competitive cycle in program history, and our inaugural She Leads FIRST Award recognized the women mentors who anchor this work.

From rookie to the championship floor

If Tech Turn Up tells the story of who we are, Team 11425 Byteforge tells the story of what is possible. The Colonial Heights, Virginia rookie team entered the season through our Geared Up FRC cohort, supported by mentor matching, structured onboarding, and the Catalyst Program. By April, Byteforge had earned a championship spot as a first-year team, competing at the FRC Chesapeake District Championship at VSU alongside the strongest teams in the region. That trajectory, rookie year through Geared Up support to a District Championship berth, is exactly the proof point that justifies every dollar invested in rookie team launch. It is the difference between a one-time experience and a workforce development pipeline.

Looking ahead to FY27

The work continues. This summer brings our Mentor Conference at James Madison University on August 8 and 9, themed One FIRST, alongside FTC Academy for new coaches across the district. Through our BRIDGES initiative we are working to launch eight new FRC teams across DC, Maryland, and Virginia, expand FTC Geared Up into communities where competitive robotics has been out of reach, and sustain the Southwest Virginia and West Virginia pipelines that have already begun feeding the next generation of teams. We are also in active conversation with several new partners on commitments designed to bring our regional impact to the next level. More to share on those soon.

Thank you for making this possible. Every dollar you contribute helps us launch more teams, train more mentors, and host more events where students discover what they are capable of. What we are building is not robots. It is people.

With gratitude,

Alex Bryant

President, FIRST Chesapeake

Adelaide started with LEGO bricks. At nine years old, she joined one of the 100 new FIRST LEGO League Explore teams we launched across Maryland this past year—her first exposure to engineering concepts, her first time working on a team to solve a real-world problem. She built a model addressing energy efficiency in her community, presented her research to judges, and discovered something powerful: she could design solutions to problems she cared about.

That discovery is the foundation of everything we do. This season, you funded the complete pathway Adelaide and thousands of students like her will follow—from elementary exploration through high school leadership and into STEM careers. Your investment built the infrastructure that makes that journey possible across four states and every level of K-12 education.

By middle school, students like Adelaide advance to FIRST Tech Challenge, where the stakes and complexity escalate dramatically. Right now, we're in the final weekend of our FTC Qualifier season, where 287 teams have been competing for a chance to attend our 96-team Chesapeake Championship on February 7-8 in Doswell, Virginia. That Championship will be one of the largest FTC competitions in the world, bringing together the region's strongest teams for alliance-based matches where students deploy thousands of lines of code, custom-machined components, and strategic gameplay they've refined over months of iteration. These middle schoolers aren't just building robots—they're developing the project management skills, technical documentation capabilities, and presentation experience that prepare them for high school engineering and beyond.

The culmination arrives in high school with FIRST Robotics Competition, where students engineer 120-pound robots in six-week build sprints that mirror real industry timelines. This season we're preparing to launch 120 FRC teams into competition—our strongest roster yet and a clear signal that post-pandemic recovery has turned into sustained growth. These teams benefit from expanded support infrastructure you're funding, including our new virtual coach chat sessions for both FTC and FRC. These sessions, led by our Team Advisory Committees, lower the barriers for new mentors stepping into coaching roles for the first time. When experienced coaches provide real-time guidance during the most challenging phases of the season, rookie teams survive their first year and return stronger. That mentor-to-mentor knowledge transfer is how we've achieved retention rates above 90 percent in our Geared Up cohorts—and it's how we're building the capacity to serve even more students in the years ahead.

Adelaide's journey doesn't end at graduation. Longitudinal research tracking FIRST alumni over ten years shows that 83 percent major in STEM fields—more than double the national average—and 61 percent specifically pursue engineering or computer science. Female FIRST alumni are 3.7 times more likely to major in computer science than their peers and report significantly higher early-career salaries. The students you're supporting this season will become the engineers solving climate challenges, the computer scientists building ethical AI systems, the manufacturing innovators creating domestic production capacity, and the mentors who return to guide the next cohort. In June, the elite among them will compete at our newly rebranded Multinational Tech Invitational, where 40 of the world's top FTC teams gather at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory for a competition that connects students directly with aerospace engineers, university recruiters, and industry leaders. Your investment compounds across decades.

From LEGO bricks to leadership roles on the global stage—that's the arc you're funding. Every elementary student who discovers she loves problem-solving, every middle schooler who realizes he can code, every high schooler who presents technical work to NASA scientists and recognizes she belongs in engineering spaces—those moments of recognition create the STEM workforce our region desperately needs. You're not funding a program. You're funding the infrastructure that transforms curiosity into capability, and capability into careers that build the future.

Links:

• 2025 End of Year Impact Report

• FIRST_Chesapeake_FY25_Season_Impact_Report_1.pdf (PDF)