Calibrating
FRC #1148 · Harvard-Westlake School
A FIRST Robotics Competition team designing, building, and driving a new competition robot every season.
Since 2003
From VEX to FIRST
Team 1148 ran for 13 years before a VEX Robotics Competition team took its place at Harvard-Westlake. That VEX team went on to win the California State Championship four times and the VEX World Championship in 2015, 2021, and 2024.
The middle school program is still running VEX. In the 2022 offseason, the high school restarted 1148 to compete in FIRST Robotics Competition—a bigger build, a longer season, and a different kind of pressure.
Three seasons in: a District debut in 2025-26, back-to-back Finalist and Excellence in Engineering awards, and a first trip to the FIRST World Championship in Houston in 2025.
40 students
Built by the team that drives it
Forty students split across mechanical, electrical, programming, and business subteams design and build a new robot every season, with mentors and student leads teaching incoming members the skills as they go rather than gating them behind a tryout.
2025 qualified the team for its first World Championship off a 4th-place qualification finish and a semifinal run at the Idaho Regional. The 2025-26 season opened in the District model for the first time, with a Finalist Award at Hueneme Port and an Excellence in Engineering Award at Glendale.
The middle school VEX program keeps feeding the pipeline, so the roster doesn't reset every graduation cycle.
Off the field
More than the robot
Long car trips to competitions, celebratory laser tag after a good weekend, lunch spent arguing about mechanism design—the team treats the hours outside the build space as part of what makes the build season survivable. Members come from different grades, subteams, and backgrounds and end up depending on each other under a ship deadline that doesn't move.
That's deliberate: the collaboration habits that get a robot built under a hard deadline are the same ones that matter in an engineering team after school.
Our mission
Built by students, run like an engineering company
The team runs subteams, deadlines, and a build budget the way a small engineering org does—with students in the lead roles and mentors filling in the gaps. The goal is a working robot every season and students who leave knowing what it actually takes to ship hardware on a deadline.
At tournaments, look for the full-black 1148 shirts on the field.