322 Points to Victory: How Team 2584 Dominated the Hueneme Competition

The stands were packed, and the crowd roared as Team 2584 unleashed a barrage of balls. The screams echoed around the giant hangar at Port Hueneme for the first week of the 2026 FRC robotics. FRC is a high school-level robotics competition where teams from around the world compete in a yearly game.

42 teams competed this weekend, with roughly the top 20% of teams going to Southern California State Championships. Viewpoint is part of the multi-school Team 2584, which was founded in 2018. In addition to Viewpoint, it includes Reseda High School and Louisville High School.

Team 2584’s engineers faced many challenges in designing a robot for this year’s game. One of which was that the original robot was too heavy. According to Mr. Rush, the lead mentor, “we started using SRPP, which is like carbon fiber but polypropylene.” This change allowed for the robot to be lighter, meeting the weight requirement, and as Mr. Rush notes, “now the robot is a really cool black and red.”

Team 2584 opened the tournament strong with their three-robot team as part of the red alliance, winning the match with a final score of 98 points. “Leading up to the weekend of the comp, we changed our flywheel structure,” said Shuntao Zhang, the lead technician and a sophomore from Viewpoint, “shooting was higher than intended, leading to inaccuracies.” However, by the second match, Shuntao and the programming squad had dialed in the shooting, allowing the team to secure another win.

The team’s success climaxed in their third match, where their alliance scored 322 points over the course of the three minutes, and set an undefeated competition high score! The team’s success during the match was largely due to its driver, Andre, a freshman from Reseda High. “As a freshman, this is my first time driving in FRC,” he said, “a lot of teams don’t let rookies do much because they don’t have experience, but being on a team that lets freshmen participate is amazing!” On an emotional note, Andre wore the same onesie at the driver’s station that his brother wore in 2020, when his brother was a driver, illustrating that it does indeed take a village.

It takes an enormous amount of time and commitment from the team members to get competition-ready. Shuntao says, “30 people work on [the robot]. Each [person] shows up five hours a week for five to six weeks. So, at least 250-300 work-hours.” This commitment is what makes Team 2584 such a tight-knit community. As students, as well as teammates, team members have to balance robotics, extracurricular, and academic work. Shuntao explained that, “Neither is more important than the other… [he] has three commitments: theatre, school, and robots,” for him, “there are timing conflicts between theatre and robotics [but he] usually prioritizes what’s more important [during that moment]”.

Shai, a Viewpoint senior on the team, said that it teaches you “how to work well with others, since everyone is always coming up to you to ask for help,” and the community as a whole shares that sentiment, embodying their core value of gracious professionalism during and out of competitions.