The WA Robotics team traveled to Houston, Texas from April 28 to May 3 in order to compete in the World Championship. The team finished in third place after having competed with their team-designed robot which shot balls into a basket.

The team began at the Western New England University Qualifier where they completed a rare sweep by winning all of their matches, as well as capturing highly selective awards. The Ghosts earned the Inspire Award which is the highest honor presented within their regular season, the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC). There, they also brought their alliance, a group with different teams conjoined, to victory as the leaders of the Winning Alliance. The achievements quickly finalized the team as a serious contender for World’s as they headed into the remainder of the season.

From there, the team continued on their winning path at the Wentworth Qualifier where they achieved the Control Award for their consistent and professional programming. For the second competition in a row, they earned a spot on the Winning Alliance.

“This achievement was really good because it proved how the teams success was not a one time thing, rather the outcome which was given because [of their] excellence,” Robotics advisor Callie Borden said.

This success was topped by consistently ranking as the number one offensive power and being placed in the top 20 out of almost 8,000 teams worldwide.

At the Massachusetts State Championship, the Ghosts claimed the honor of being the premier team in their region as well as claiming a spot on the Winning Alliance and, for the first time, the Captain Title for the state, which made them the leaders of their alliance. The team concluded their regular season with a historic record of 14-1.

The group paved their path to the first ever World Championship in Houston, where they competed against 336 elite teams in the famous Ross Division, which has been recognized for their high level of consistency and accuracy. The team worked hard and won 10 straight, nail biting matches to be selected as the number two team in their respective division.

Their only loss fell to the hands of the number one team globally, however, according to Borden, this began the start of an epic collaboration.

During the partner selection draft, where top teams selected whom they wanted to be in partnership with during the competition, the number one ranked team from Romania chose the Ghosts as their number one pick.

“It was very intimidating, this was the number one team in the entire world, so we were trying [to get] to their level,” Borden said. “We kind of knew they were going to pick [us], but we didn’t know for sure, so we were up until 2 a.m. working with this Romanian team in order to really get to know them.”

Borden described the work they did throughout the night, such as fixing and testing their robot, as incredibly beneficial as they ended up winning throughout the division playoffs.

“The communication challenges were difficult, they only spoke a little bit of English, so there were certain things in which they were attempting to communicate with us, but we just were not understanding,” Borden said.

Throughout the series of divisional matches the alliance broke the high score a total of four times.

The alliance made it to the Da Vinci Tournament, the championships highest tournament, in which the victors from each of the six divisions compete against one another.

After they fell short in the last showdown, they finished the year by ranking third in the world out of many highly ranked teams.

According to Borden, they came back to Westford not just with a world-class trophy and divisional title, but also with the two highest match scores documented in the entire world in the 2025-2026 season.

Their success was not just based off of their robot or the intelligence that went in, it was the relationships and connections that were key.

“This year has been different from any other season we’ve had, and I’ve been with this club for the last four years, so I can confidently say that this season was like no other,” senior captain Pranav Khurana said. “The biggest reason behind that was not the technical skills of the members, it was the chemistry and the closeness that we shared.”

According to Khurana, the team wanted to put forth as much effort and dedication as they could, so they set up unofficial meetings in order to make building the team and connections much easier.

The Ghosts have spent countless hours putting in effort on their robot ensuring that it is perfect, meeting several times a week in their practice field.

“They were always making small improvements, every time they had even the tiniest fault they would work until they were able to pinpoint the problem, their effort was one of the biggest things which brought them to this point,” Borden said.

According to Borden, this experience was incredible and memorable, she hopes that for other members of the club who were not able to attend, they know that this is what they should be working for.

This season was notable not just for the team at their competitions, but for WA.

“We have found out it is supposed to take a team ten years to make it to where we got, we did it in one. It is going to be hard for us to not make that an expectation for years going forward, but for now, we are just chasing World’s and our individual goals now,” Borden said.

According to Khurana, the only hope from the graduating class for the years to come is that the spirit of the community stays alive.

“As long as the people on the team care for each other and have each other’s backs, I have no doubt in the club’s future success,” Khurana said.