Meet Jinann AbuDagga ’25, Team Captain for FTC Team Trobotix at West High School. Having just won the Hydro League Tournament on Jan. 14, AbuDagga shares insight on the team’s win, common obstacles, favorite memories and the future of Trobotix.

WSS: How would you describe Trobotix as a team?

JA: It’s amazing. I spend most of my weekdays with the team, and they’ve become some of my good friends, and I really like spending my time with them. They’re also dedicated and they want to win, and that’s something I really enjoy about the team.”

WSS: How has Trobotix overcome challenges and obstacles this season?

JA: Communication [last year] was a big issue for the team. We would always have a task and no one would actually assume someone else would do it, and no one would communicate with each other and the task would never get done. But now this year, we put together a leadership. So if there’s a task, the leaders talk to each other, they are like, “Okay, we’ll assign it to people on our sub-teams”, which is build business strategy and programming. And then people on the sub-teams divide up the task, so the task gets done.

WSS: What was your strategy for achieving first-place winning alliance? 

JA: We had a really good autonomous, which is basically where the robot is all programmed. We don’t get to drag the robot. Our goal for that was to be able to score one cone on a medium junction and to be able to park with a signal sleeve, and during TeleOp [teleoperation] our goal was to score nine cones, which is a two-minute period driver control period Our goal for endgame was to cap and score circuit, which is basically where the cones are in a line from one corner to another.

WSS: What do you credit Trobotix’s 1st place victory to last Saturday?

JA: Just the team in general. The past two weeks before the league meet, we would stay up until 10 working on the robot, making sure everything gets done.

WSS: What’s been your favorite memory so far this season?

JA: Definitely Saturday. [Hydro League Tournament] We totally went into it not expecting the win, and the moment we won was one of my favorite memories so far.

WSS: What does Trobotix have in store for its future?

JA: Well, right now we’re mostly focused on Super Qualifiers. If we advance from Super Qualifiers, we can go to state, and then the top two teams from state get to go worlds, and depending on where our season ends, we go into the offseason where we focus on outreach training. Just focus on learning so we can come back better for the next season.