McHenry County robotics teams heads to international competition for 2nd straight year

The Golden Ratio, a McHenry County-based robotics team for high school students, are Houston-bound in April after qualifying to complete in an international competition for a second consecutive time.

Last year, the team finished 23rd out of 56 in its division on the global stage. The FIRST Championship is an international competition for youth robotics teams to show off their skills in science, technology, engineering and math. The Golden Ratio will compete against teams from over 50 countries from April 16-19 in Texas.

The team is coming off of a recent first-place win for the Inspire award at the state competition at Elgin Community College. The Inspire award is given to teams who excel in all categories, from technical strategies to community outreach and marketing. The Golden Ratio won second place for the award at last year’s state competition.

“It’s such an honor,” student and Golden Ratio team member Ryan Nolan from Cary-Grove High School said. “Not many teams go back-to-back.”

The 2025 Golden Ratio team also includes Nolan, Jackson Woestman and Josiah Ryan from Cary-Grove; Josh Weston from Johnsburg High School; and home-schooled student Nehemiah Schultz from Island Lake.

Lead coach Melissa Ryan, who calls her team the “humble winners,” describes the competition as a way for teams to create a “microcosm of a small engineering business.”

This year’s robot created by the high schoolers, called Raider, is about 30 pounds and capable of grabbing items, placing them into baskets and suspending itself in the air by hanging off of structure – all at impressive speeds. The robot features a picture of systems engineer Skip Moore, the team’s mentor who died last year.

“This is probably our best robot, yet,” Schultz said.

In order to compete, the team needs to raise $25,000 to cover supplies, registration, travel and lodging costs. The team gets support from company sponsors like Baxter and Swiss Automation, but they are always looking for more companies and community members to help, Melissa Ryan said.

Donations can be made to the team’s PayPal fundraising page at Bit.ly/GoldenRatioMcHenryCounty.

The team works out of a space at Trinity Baptist Community Church, located at 5918 S. Route 31 in Crystal Lake. Not only does the team use the space for for competition preparations, but it’s also a hub that the community can use so STEM activities can reach more people. The Golden Ratio hosted scrimmage meets with other Illinois teams last year and has been working with three teams in Jamaica by helping them code and create their own robots.

Melissa Ryan started the team about seven years ago. By involving the students in marketing and networking their team, they learn so many more lifelong skills outside of STEM, she said.

“The soft skills they learn is equal, if not more valuable, than the technical skills,” she said.