This season, we have devoted ourselves to building an inclusive, equitable, and sustainable STEM ecosystem across Southwest Florida and beyond. We continue to pursue engineering excellence while using our experience, resources, and platform to uplift, support, and inspire fellow FTC

teams.

We are proud to present our work and accomplishments from this year. From our fully student-designed custom robot—built from scratch as a beacon of innovation—to our unwavering commitment to creating lasting opportunity for others, Java The Hutts strives to embody the values and mission FIRST was founded on.

Decode League Championship (States Bound)

Our team headed into the League Championships with the simple goal of qualifying for the Florida Championship. Additionally, we hoped to prove our robot's abilities and make a deep run into playoffs especially with the additional modifcation we made since Meet 3. We are very grateful to team 24702 Voltaris for selecting us as an alliance partner where we are proud of our performance earning us a significant amount of advancement points. We are proud to announce that with our team earning the 2nd Inspire Award combined with our advancement points earned in playoffs our team is headed to the Florida Championship in March. We are extremely excited for the opportunity to compete at the Florida Championships where we hope to prove ourselves as a top team in the state.

See you at states!!

Decode League Meets 1, 2, and 3

At Meet 1 our team decided to compete using our GoBilda kit bot while we continued work on our custom robot. Using this kit bot our team won four out of five matches and earned the 8th rank in the Gulf Coast League, this rank puts us in a great place to improve on in the coming meets.

At Meet 2 we unvailed our first iteration Gurt however unfortunately during some practice matches our main intake shaft got bent so our intakes did not function. Despite the unfortunate damage, we used this meet to test the main systems of the robot specifically the shooter and the flicking mechanisms and we determined that we need to incorporate counter rollers into our shooter to prevent backspin and we need to refine the flicking mechanism.

At Meet 3 we had an improved robot with more robust subsystems that was able to reliably intake, sort, and score leading us to win four out of five of our matches bringing our rank back up to 6th place. At this meet we really showed off our capabilities and recovered from the rough start of our season putting us in a great spot before the League Championship.

Our team is extremely proud of our growth over the first three meets and we are extremely excited for the League Championship.

Another World Championship, Another Award!

Java The Hutts proudly represented Southwest Florida at the 2025 FIRST World Championship held in Houston, Texas, April 15–19. Out of nearly 9,000 teams that began the Into the Deep season in September of 2024, only 256 top international teams earned a spot at this prestigious global event.

Over four days of intense competition, Java The Hutts participated in alliance matches, judging presentations, pit interviews, and networking with teams and guests from around the world. The team earned Second Place for the Design Award, recognizing their robot’s elegant, efficient, and functional design.

Team member Michael Merino was also honored as a Dean’s List Award Winner, one of only ten students selected from a pool of 200 global nominees out of 100,000 FTC participants annually—a remarkable achievement recognizing leadership, technical expertise, and commitment to FIRST values.

Beyond competition, Java The Hutts made significant strides in community outreach this season. The team dedicated over 1,200 hours to STEM education, mentorship, and advocacy—impacting more than 100,000 people globally.

This was the team's third trip to the World Championship and the third time they won an award at the World Championship! Last year the team won the 2nd Place Connect Award for the work they did to connect with the STEM community, locally and globally. In 2022, the team was part of the winning alliance, taking the World Champion title after a victory in the robot game finals!

Help Support Our Trip to the World Championship!

Email for Sponsorship, Download PDF,

OR Donate to our GoFundMe campaign

State Championship Inspire Winner!

Our team is thrilled to announce our FIRST Tech Challenge Florida State Championships results. We performed consistently in robot game and impressed the judges across the board earning us our third 1st place Inspire Award State title in 4 years, our second in a row, as well as the 1st advancement slot to the FIRST World Championship in Houston, TX. The Inspire award is the top award available and is given to the team who not only built an incredible robot but truly embodied the FIRST spirit, qualifying in every award category, as the top overall team.

We are also very proud of our very own Michael Merino for becoming a Deans List Finalist, an award to recognize the most commendable 10th and 11th grade students who demonstrate outstanding leadership and achievement, this award qualifies Michael to attend the FIRST World Championship where he could be selected as one of the 10 Deans List award winners.

We are grateful for the hard work and determination of our whole team as well as the contributions of our sponsors and mentors, as we would not be celebrating these wins without their support and guidance.

March 1st, 2025

ROBOT REVEAL!

Introducing... Hans Not So Solo!

After a bit of an overhaul, Hans is ready for the State Championship! Check out our awesome new robot reveal on our YouTube channel and make sure to like and subscribe! Comment with your favorite feature or design element.

League Championships!

As a team we are so proud of the work our build, programming, outreach, and drive teams did, we had our hopes of bringing home Inspire award which we are proud to announce has been achieved. This achievement strengthens our legacy within our league, cements a remarkable 4/4 inspire award run in the last four years, and earns our team a bid to the Florida State Championships in Winterhaven FL. We thank our sponsors for the continued support of our journey.

February 1st, 2025

January 11, 2025

Meet 3 Results!

Coming off of an amazing meet 2 our hopes were high for a solid meet 3. We put in the hours and it paid off, as one for the books. Our team went undefeated, climbed from rank 5 to rank 3, and showed off our amazing mentee team Mech Tech! Our hopes are high for the League Championships.

It was awesome to be at Arthrex, again, and we appreciate their support as a FIRST Tech Challenge Gulf Coast partner.

Meet 2 Results!

As a team we are happy to say that the meet this Saturday was our best performance yet this season. All day we were able to climb the ranks from 15th all the way to 5th winning 4 out of 6 matches! With many matches to go, we are excited to see how much we are able to improve and be in a picking position.

December 7, 2024

November 9, 2024

Meet 1!

The first official meet of the season is always exciting, but it was extra special to have been able to share the day with several brand new teams from our area, experiencing an FTC meet for the very first time. We can't wait to see how they progress over the season as they continue to learn and grow on their robotics journey.

Gulf Coast League Scrimmage!

As a soft start to the season the Scrimmage offers teams a chance to test out their robots on the field, interacting with game elements and other robots before the official meets.

Our favorite part of the Scrimmage, besides seeing all of the teams again after summer break, is helping other teams with build or programming issues, talking strategy, and sharing stories about all the ideas that didn't make the cut in the robot design.

October 26, 2024

September 7, 2024

Into The Deep Season Kick-Off!

We had a great time getting all of our Southwest Florida teams together at our local science center, the IMAG, on Saturday, for the big game reveal, which we were able to watch together on a 50-foot screen in their theater. We also invited students interested in exploring robotics or getting started on their own FIRST journey.

FIRST World Championship 2024!

Our team is honored to have won the 2nd place Connect Award at the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship! We are so grateful for the Southwest Florida STEM community including our generous mentors and sponsors, whose support made this season and our FIRST World Championship journey possible. We are so proud of our performance this year and are moving right along with additional outreach already underway fo the 2024-2025 Season!

NBC2 Project Ken Story

This season has had many highlights, but none could ever top this one! We feel honored to be able to apply what we have learned in FIRST and FIRST Tech Challenge to help make a Ken’s life a little easier, and some of those “little things” he has missed due to the progression of his ALS, now within reach. Go check out the news story https://www.nbc-2.com/article/story2share-teenagers-help-fort-myers-man-als-arms/60502988

ROBOT REVEAL!

Introducing... WARP!

After a long 9 weeks of work WARP is ready for Worlds! Check out our awesome new robot reveal on our YouTube channel and make sure to like and subscribe! Comment with your favorite feature or design element.

We're Headed to Worlds AGAIN!

Wow! We are so proud of our build, programming and outreach teams for all their hard work, we couldn't do any of it without them and winning inspire again means so much to us and we are so excited for our trip to worlds this April for the second time. We have high hopes for this competition based off of our previous worlds visit.

Due to being a community team, we rely on sponsorships and donations to purchase parts for our robots, pay for tournament registration fees, travel expenses, and outreach supplies.

If you're interested in supporting our team with a financial donation, please check out our Sponsor Page with a link to our Donation Page.

Project jBot

A frequent question we get asked during our outreach events and competitions is, "How do I get my child involved?"

FIRST LEGO League Explore or Challenge teams are great preparation, yet, parents and children want to jump right in while the excitement is fresh.

We set out to find a solution. After researching the market, we found that most entry-level robotics kits are priced at $100 or more; so we designed and created a prototype that as a low-cost alternative. We have partnered with a local science center, IMAG, to create a retail kit that can be sold in their gift shop and satellite center, plus are developing a custom curriculum to teach basic as well as advanced design, build, and programming as a pathway to prepare future team members for FLL and FTC. We are conducting summer camps for K-6th grade students at both their museum and satellite center using this curriculum.

Brand New Robot WARP

We are so excited to announce our brand new robot that we have been working on behind the scenes since Meet 3, to use at the state competition. We are proud of the improvements we have made on the innovative design of this season's original robot, Rancor. We expect to see great results from Warp in the future. With only 30 days after the parts arrived to completely build and program the new robot, we are so very proud of the work our team has put into this bold engineering endeavor.

Project Huttling

Ever since our team's start in 2018, we have held at our core, a desire to make robotics accessible to everyone. With extensive community outreach and support for other teams year after year, we have taken a very exciting step towards meeting that mission in a far more impactful way this year, by starting a brand new team for students from underserved communities to engage in FIRST Tech Challenge. This will enable them to develop the necessary skills needed to become engineers, programmers, and STEM professionals.

We know the impact FIRST programs can have and we are excited about inspiring a brand new community team at the Quality Life Center.

Bonita Springs YMCA FLL Robotics Club

We are proud to announce that we have brought FIRST to the Bonita Springs YMCA with a brand new FLL Robotics Club. With the support of a local FLL team we are able provide kits and mentorship to the brand new club consisting of 15 students ages 6-10, who are brand new to the FIRST program and working afterschool twice a week.

League Championships

We are excited to share our accomplishments from our league championship. To start we are proud of our leagues very own Bob Sadenwater who won the compass award, which we nominated him for with a minute long video. Furthermore we are excited to announce we are the gulf coast league first inspire award winner for the fourth year in a row as well as first place alliance first pick, promote video, and compass video. This includes our bid to the state championships on March 2nd.

Meet #3

After our third meet of the season we have maintained our #1 ranking for the Florida Gulf Coast League and excited for the League Championship.

Meet #2

We had an amazing meet at the incredible Arthrex campus in Naples, FL. We are proud of our gracious event hosts and of our record-breaking autonomous performance.

We are now preparing for Meet #3 on January 13th!

Meet #1

We are proud to announce that we now hold the penalty-free high score in the state of Florida after Meet #1, with our alliance partner 13093 Golden Fish.

We are now preparing for Meet #2 on December 9th!

Gulf Coast League Scrimmage

We had a fantastic League scrimmage and build day working to assist and support many other teams in our region. We are now preparing for our first league meet on November 11th and are looking forward to it!

Hutt Talk is Here!

Java the Hutts have now launched Hutt Talk! Here you can interact with directly with JTH members and ask them questions from anywhere!

Go to https://groups.google.com/g/hutt-talk

New Video Series Out Now!

We are now releasing a new video series on the basics of FTC! Check out our YouTube channel for all of our content!

We Won the 2022 World Championship!

We are happy to announce that we were a part of the winning alliance for the FTC World Championship! We would like to thank our sponsors for enabling us to do our best and proudly represent our State and Country!

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