Melissa High School Robotics competes in BEST Robotics — a fall season where a student-run team designs and builds a machine from a box of raw parts, and is judged just as hard on the engineering notebook, the exhibit, and the presentation as on the field.
BEST does not score a robot alone. It scores an engineering organisation — the machine, the paperwork behind it, and the case the team makes for both. Every one of these is a real role a student owns.
Turning a kit of plywood, PVC and hardware into a machine that survives three minutes of competition. Cut, drill, assemble, break it, fix it, repeat.
Every arm, drivetrain and bracket is modelled and argued over before anybody touches a saw. Good CAD is the cheapest way to fail — you find the problem on screen.
The written record of how the robot got made — decisions, sketches, tests, dead ends. It is one of the heaviest-weighted parts of the BEST Award, and it is written all season, not the night before.
Control code, sensor handling, and the driver tuning that turns a good mechanism into a fast one. The difference between a robot that works and a robot that wins is usually here.
A built display that explains the team and the robot to judges and to the public, and the students who stand in front of it and answer anything asked.
A formal presentation to a judging panel treating the team as a company: what it makes, who it serves, how it is funded, and where it is going next.
Melissa High School Robotics is a student-run team in Melissa, Texas, competing in BEST Robotics — Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology. BEST is free to enter and hands every team the same box of raw materials, which means a team from a town the size of ours starts on exactly the same line as anyone else.
The season is short and deliberately brutal: the game is revealed at Kickoff, and roughly six weeks later the robot has to work in front of a crowd. In between, the team designs it, builds it, programs it, documents it, builds a booth about it, and prepares a presentation defending all of the above.
We are organised the way a small engineering company is — a President and Vice President over an officer corps, and a Director owning each sub-team, with leads under them. That is not for show. When six weeks is all you have, somebody has to own each deliverable outright, and everyone has to know who that is.
Students join with no experience and leave able to cut, wire, model, code, write, and stand in front of a judging panel. That is the actual product. The robot is how we get there.
Six weeks compresses everything. These are the habits that decide whether the team comes out of it with a robot and with each other.
A rough prototype on the table beats a perfect idea in the air. We test early, fail on purpose, and let the machine settle the argument.
The notebook is not homework, it is the team's memory. If a decision is not recorded the day it is made, the reason behind it is gone by Game Day.
Nobody is the only one who knows how something works. Every skill on this team is handed down before the seniors leave, or it leaves with them.
Every deliverable has one name on it. Ownership is not blame — it means somebody is accountable for it being finished, and free to decide how.
Spirit and Sportsmanship is scored for a reason. We lend tools to the team that beat us, and we lose without excuses.
BEST gives everyone the same kit. Budget is not the variable — hours in the shop and care in the details are.
The BEST season runs in the fall. Dates for 2026 are set by our hub — fill them in below once they are published.
Every team in the hub shows up, the year's game is announced, and we go home with the rules and a box of identical raw materials. [EDIT: add the 2026 game name once BEST announces it.]
Strategy first: what actually scores. Then CAD, cardboard mock-ups, and drivetrain tests. The notebook starts on day one, not at the end.
The real robot gets cut and assembled while programming brings up controls on whatever subsystem is finished. Exhibit construction and the marketing presentation run in parallel.
A dry run on a real field in front of a real crowd — the first honest test of both the robot and the drive team's nerves.
Robot matches all day, plus judged interviews at the exhibit and the marketing presentation. Two trophies are live: the Robot Game and the BEST Award.
Hub winners advance to the regional championship. [EDIT: name your regional, e.g. "Texas BEST Regional Championship".]
BEST supplies the kit, but travel, tools, materials beyond the box, and the exhibit are on us. Local businesses and families make the difference — and they get their name on the booth, the shirts, and this page.
Students at Melissa High School can join at any point before Kickoff — no experience needed, and there is a job for you whether you like wiring, writing, or talking to a crowd. Businesses and families: sponsorship keeps the shop running.