The Cache Money 8096 robotics team competed at two regional competitions this month, showing a great improvement from last year.

At the Milwaukee regional competition March 23-25, the team lost in the semifinals but received the “Quality” award. The team was also in the finalist alliance at the Midwest regional competition March 16-18.

After the 12 qualifying matches of the Milwaukee regional, Cache Money ranked 9th out of 47 teams and was picked by the top-ranked team to form an alliance.

“Getting picked by the number one alliance was huge because that’s, like, the best robot of the day,” Darren Fuller, the team’s faculty coach, said.

However, the team forgot to put back one screw in the robot’s wheel when repairing, causing the members to lose the third match in the semifinals.

“We kind of expected to do better,” Mr. Fuller said, “and we probably would have won if the wheel hadn’t fallen off.”

At the Midwest competition, Cache Money was ranked seventh after the qualifying matches and gave up their alliance captainship when picked by the fourth-ranked alliance.

“We didn’t expect to do that well,” Mr. Fuller said, “and then throughout the day it just kept getting better and better.”

Cache Money members are hoping to win their final regional competition in Cleveland on March 29-April 1 to qualify for the Worlds competition.

“This year,” said Aditya Gupta, a code coordinator of the team, “instead of just being a robot that is carried along for the ride, we were actually, like, actively contributing.”