When most high school seniors are thinking about prom and graduation parties, the St. Francis High School robotics team is prepping for something far cooler: competing against universities like Purdue, Northeastern, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo at the World Championships in Newfoundland.
This isn’t some casual spring trip. St. Francis Robotics has qualified for the World Championship for six consecutive years, and they’re bringing real hardware to the table. The team designed and built an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) called Aurelia from the ground up—no shortcuts, no kits. We’re talking electrical systems, coding, mechanics, all of it. The 24 students on this year’s roster (16 sophomores, four juniors, and four seniors) engineered a robot capable of completing underwater tasks like collecting coral samples, skills that simulate what professional ROVs actually do in the field.
What makes this year’s competition especially significant is that the high school team will compete head-to-head with collegiate programs for the first time. That’s a big step up. But here’s the thing: St. Francis has already proven they belong at that level. They won the world title in 2023, so this isn’t a first-timer story. It’s a defending champion story.
One of the team’s standouts is a 12th grader named Yoga, who’s participated in World Championships for four years and is heading to Newfoundland on Sunday. Her path tells you everything about what this program builds. She walked in without robotics experience and fell in love with it—so much so that she’s now studying mechanical engineering at UCLA. That’s not just a cool extracurricular; that’s a pipeline to STEM careers. And she’s not hoarding that knowledge. The team mentors younger students all the way down to fifth grade, deliberately passing down what they’ve learned to the next generation.
In a city like Sacramento, where robotics excellence at this level is genuinely rare, St. Francis is proof that world-class STEM programs can thrive right here. These aren’t kids at some elite prep school with unlimited funding. They’re students who showed up, put in the work, and built something extraordinary. The fact that they’re now competing against universities? That’s not a fluke. That’s a program operating at the highest level. The World Championships kick off soon, and Sacramento will be watching one of its own go toe-to-toe with some of the brightest young engineers in the country.
About the Author
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
