The Steel Dragons know exactly what they would buy with more money: carbon fiber, their own practice field and enough room to test a robot without borrowing space across town.

Instead, the Taylor Allderdice High School robotics team has learned to compete with polycarbonate, reused parts and quick pit repairs, pushing its green dragon-eyed robot Theodosia — named for their collective love of “Hamilton” — to the 2026 FIRST Robotics Competition World Championship in Houston.

“It makes us think of creative solutions that other teams might not think of to make a good robot.”

Ayaka Hayashi, Steel dragons

For the Pittsburgh public school team, building a competitive robot has relied on engineering around a budget that shapes what materials they use, where they practice and how far they can go.

“Do we break down a little bit more? Yes, but as I said, we work around it. It gives our pit crew a lot of practice,” Steel Dragons president Izzy Stratman told Technical.ly. 

Steel Dragons team members agreed that the biggest challenge they face is finances. 

The room they have at Allderdice High School is too small, so they borrow practice space from Girls of Steel Robotics in Bakery Square. They can’t afford their own space and rely on duct tape and zip ties to make necessary repairs when Theodosia takes a beating. 

“Funds are probably the biggest thing holding us back. We have to be very conscientious of it,” Stratman said. 

Still, the same budget pressures that shape Theodosia’s design have not kept the team from winning — in part because they have forced the Steel Dragons to become faster problem-solvers, more careful builders and more creative engineers. 

The price of competing

The Steel Dragons aren’t an anomaly in the world of high school robotics. 

Robotics isn’t cheap. The median FIRST Robotics Competition team budget comes in between $17,400 and $56,300 depending on the team’s location. 

Teams in Philly lost access to funding last year due to a contract between the Philadelphia Robotics Coalition and the School District of Philadelphia, despite a history of winning top prizes. 

An Iowa City team had to dip into this year’s funding to support last year’s world championship trip, leaving them with a deficit and a challenge in making it to Houston. Across the country, high school robotics groups are put to a competitive disadvantage because of funding.

Teams like the Steel Dragons are free for students to join, leaving the weight of fees and travel to fall on school funding and sponsorships. That price only grows if the team succeeds and makes it to finals — for the Steel Dragons, that was a $25,000 bill.

That’s where sponsors come in, a key resource for the cash-strapped orgs.

“Sponsors are very big about making sure they reach as many people as possible with the funds they give us, so outreach is very important. We make sure to put that in our emails, for instance, talking about what we do outside the team,” Stratman said. 

The team is also partially funded by Pittsburgh Public Schools under the Howmet Grant, which funds robotics across the district, according to Stratman. 

“Luckily our district was nice enough to actually fund our trip to worlds,” Stratman said. “If they didn’t do that, I don’t think we’d have any funds right now. I will not deny that.”

Built to surprise

The Steel Dragons don kelly green and have become a close group of friends throughout the school year. They practice up to six days a week in the winter, with some team members working from the moment school lets out until nighttime. 

Founded in 1998, the Dragons broke a team record at the most recent world championship and made it to round three, match ten.  

Despite its growing track of success with a trip to worlds last season, this year’s qualification took the team by surprise at the Greater Pittsburgh regional competition last spring. 

“We were all just like, ‘Oh, well, it’s not gonna be us,’ and then they call our name, and we all just look at each other, and we’re in shock for a second. So we’re just sitting there, and then we just start screaming,” code sub-captain and media captain Ayaka Hayashi said. 

Team members have noticed that their robot often goes undefended because of its less-modern look in competitions, allowing them to score more points. The underdog Theodosia, with its painted green dragon eyes and duct tape fixes, regularly flies under the radar and leads the team to victory. Their fixes, although not made with the most high-tech materials, work. 

“It makes us think of creative solutions that other teams might not think of to make a good robot that has a similar competitive level to teams with more resources or funding,” Hayashi said. 

Over the summer, the team members are balancing offseason competitions — they won one just last week — and starting preparations for next year’s competition. 

For the 2026-2027 season, the goal isn’t exactly to win worlds. It’s simply to make it back.

“I was honestly just so happy that we made it that far,” Hayashi said. “It was just like a big achievement for the team.”