San Jose Blazing Bulldogs Robotics Booster Club

For the second year in a row, the San Jose High School robotics team, the Blazing Bulldogs, have qualified for the FIRST Robotics Competition World Championship!

You can watch our 2025 Robot Reveal Video here to see what our robot, Zuma, can do!

You can watch us set a World High Score of 240 points, unpenalized, at the Silicon Valley Regional competition here (look for #581 on the Blue Alliance!)

Because of our outstanding performance so far in the 2025 season, the Bulldogs will compete at the FRC World Championship in Houston, Texas from April 16th-19th alongside 600 of the top teams from around the world. This is only the second time in nearly 20 years that the team has qualified for the World Championship. After two Regional competitions, the Blazing Bulldogs are currently ranked 15th Worldwide, out of 3,709 teams. However, qualifying for the World Championship was just one of the many hurdles the Bulldogs face to attend the highly anticipated Championship in mid-April. To compete there, our team must raise the $5,750 entry fee along with nearly $20,000 in travel expenses to get the team to the competition in Houston, Texas.

Support for the team can take many forms. Individuals are encouraged to donate to the team’s 501c3 Non-Profit via this GoFundMe Campaign.

Companies are advised to contact us on our website to learn how to best direct their support for the team.

About Our Team:

We are Team 581 Blazing Bulldogs, a high school robotics team from San Jose High School in downtown San Jose, CA. We are a successful team of 35 high school students who build competitive, 150lb robots from scratch to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). We have received recognition for our technical efforts and breakout success in the 2023 & 2024 seasons, breaking several long-standing team records year-over-year. In the 2024 season, Team 581 ranked 67th out of 3,477 teams Worldwide.

San Jose High School is a Title I School, where the majority of students are considered underrepresented and underserved in STEM. To remove some common barriers to participation in STEM programs, our team does not charge fees for students to participate on our team or to travel to competitions, unlike many teams in our area. We believe every student should have the opportunity to experience success in STEM regardless of their socioeconomic status. Funding is critical to our mission of providing low cost STEM education and career opportunities to the students of SJHS, and we need your support.

More information about our team, organization, and sponsors can be found at: Team 581 Website

2025 Pinnacles Regional Recap:

On February 28th - March 2nd students and coaches from FIRST Robotics Competition Team 581, the Blazing Bulldogs, traveled to Hollister, California to compete at the Pinnacles Regional competition. The event, hosted at Hollister High School, lasted three challenging competition days with 35 teams from California, Nevada, and the Netherlands. This competition marked the first display of the Bulldogs’ 2025 robot for this year’s ocean-themed game, Reefscape. Bulldog students spent seven weeks designing, building, programming, and refining their robot to compete alongside thousands of teams from around the world.

Friday, the first day of the competition, was composed of robot inspection, field calibration for sensors, and practice matches. Additionally, students prepared to collect and analyze competition data and prepared for interviews with judges at the competition. Saturday marked the first day of qualification matches for the Blazing Bulldogs. During qualification matches, teams and their robots are randomly assigned to play on two alliances of three teams each. This means the team you play against one match could be on your alliance in the next. The results of these qualification matches are then used to determine the ranking of teams at the events. After eight qualification matches on Saturday, the Blazing Bulldogs finished the day with eight hard-earned wins and the #1 ranking.

On Sunday morning, the Bulldogs competed in four additional qualification matches, which resulted in 2 more wins and 2 losses, securing the #2 ranking. After qualification matches, the top eight teams at the competition are invited to select their own alliances of three teams for the double elimination tournament. 581 was able to invite both of their top picks to join their #2 seeded elimination tournament alliance. FRC team 4481 Team Rembrandts from Eindhoven, Netherlands, and FRC team 5924 Golden Gate Robotics from San Francisco, California enthusiastically joined the alliance and began strategizing for the elimination rounds.

The alliance worked through the Upper Bracket with two decisive wins to advance to the Upper Bracket Finals. In the next match, the alliance encountered difficulties with inverted controls for 5924, resulting in a close 188-173 point loss. This forced the 581, 4481, 5924 alliance into the Lower Bracket, where they had a decisive win with a score of 178-82 and advanced to the final round of the tournament. Despite a tipped over robot, the Bulldog alliance put up a good fight, but ultimately ended the tournament as Regional Finalists. The team was also honored with the event’s “Industrial Design Award” which “Celebrates the team that demonstrates industrial design principles, striking a balance between form, function, and aesthetics." The team is looking forward to developing robot improvements over the next week before competing again at their home event, the Silicon Valley Regional at the Woodside High School on March 14th-16th.