At the Heartland Regional, a rumbling sound was heard as a robot glided by, picking up coral and algae on its way. With only a few seconds left to score, junior Quinn Harman took a shot and threw the coral and algae into the scoring net, or the barge. The crowd erupted in cheers, concluding the end of the 2025 Robotics Challenge: Reefscape.

   Harman last competed sophomore year with the Reefscape challenge of moving coral and algae to the barge or center net and not get many penalties so that they could get more points than the opposing team.

   “Quinn’s never been shy as of the way he conducts himself at robotics,” robotics coach and Principles of Engineering teacher Gary Pierson said. “But to see him grow and to have some health issues his freshman year and miss out on so much of our build season, to becoming a leader last year and even more so this year, has been incredible to see.”

   Harman is the Chief Logistics Officer for FIRST Robotics Team 1764. LHS was the 1,764th school to register under FIRST. FIRST is an acronym: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, which is a non-profit founded to promote STEM education. 

    Being the Chief Logistics Officer (CLO) means he is in charge of organizing and helping out other members. He also supervises safety, is the drive and scouting lead and strategy coach. This means he assesses the overall strategy of the competition and figuring out who to team up with for semi-finals, while making sure everyone follows the safety protocols. 

   “I started robotics in my freshman year. I went to the first meeting I could and just immediately got started with it,” Harman said.

   His sophomore year he was the Scouting lead where he revamped the previous method and made it his own. The scouting lead took a group at competitions to watch matches and collected data to then put into an analysis system.

   “He has a lot of great ideas and works through them and gets people to help with them as well,” senior Ember Cox said.

   Along with robotics, Harman also participates in TSA, or Technology Students Association. Last year in TSA, Harman competed in Technological Debate, where he placed first. He also competed in Music Production, where he placed third. Other events were Future Engineering Teacher and Video Game Design with friend junior Aleyah Borsuzky who is also in Robotics and is the Lead Programmer. He is planning on continuing Technological Debate and Music Production, and is going into Board Game Design.

   “I find a lot of people through my clubs and classes due to them having similar academic passions to me, so that really helps me form bonds with them super easily,” Harman said

   He met friends like Cox who is the CEO of the Robotics Team. They joined Robotics Harman’s freshman year and Cox’s sophomore year, they started talking and became friends throughout the season. He also continued to work with Borsutzky who was friends since seventh grade gifted science class. Being a part of Robotics also comes with fun traditions like the team’s rock climbing trips.

   “He wants to make sure that everyone is happy and is having fun, but he also wants to make sure that we’re getting somewhere, we’re doing what we need to do instead of just being by ourselves and not participating in our community and in robotics,” Borsutzky said.

  Harman also participated in MSA or Missouri Scholars Academy over the summer of his sophomore year. He originally found out about MSA from his dad, who was also involved in it in high school. After he realized he could qualify, he started the application process along with 330 students from all across Missouri. The students would go to Mizzou for a month to learn and take classes of various interests they would not get to take in regular school.

 “He has a very analytical mind, he’s very sharp and thinks through very complicated, complex issues and does a great job of breaking it down,” Pierson said.

   Harman’s future plans include going into a career with a mix of mechanical and aerospace engineering, specifically to work on satellite with data collection from other planets. College wise he is thinking of Missouri S and T Milwaki School of Engineering, although his dream school is MIT. 

    “The dream will always and forever be MIT and I’m pushing myself pretty hard to get there,” Harman said.