OFF-DUTY / BEYOND THE BUILD
Things I do outside of engineering
#01 / COMMUNITY
Building the largest tournament in Hawai‘i
How I started giving back to the community that gave me my start.
Robotics shaped who I am, and I wanted more students in Hawai‘i to have that same on-ramp. So I set out to build something the state didn’t have: a homegrown, large-scale VEX tournament scene that didn’t require teams to fly off-island to compete at a high level.
I founded and organized what became the two largest VEX Robotics tournaments in the state of Hawai‘i — taking on hosting and MC duties myself, and joining the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation (RECF) to anchor the events in a real competitive pipeline. Standing on that floor with a mic, watching fields I’d planned from scratch fill with teams, was one of the most full-circle moments I’ve had.
The planning was incredibly tedious — scheduling, field logistics, volunteer coordination, bracketing, all of it. And I managed the entire logistics load remotely from Texas, during my finals week. Running a tournament from a dorm room between exams wasn’t the easy path, but it was the one that got the events off the ground.
