Maybe HS First requires a lot of programming, the regular FIRST for 9-14 does not require any programming to advance. It is mainly focussed on presentation skills rather than technical skills.
That's not specifically true, especially on a team level. Some of your team members might not have to program but you do have to get the robot to do stuff well in order to advance.
You can win the robot game and it has no bearing on advancement. The key is the 3 interviews. In the robot design interview, the number of points for quality of engineering is low. Most of the points are in the show your work category. A better presentation of a poor design will score better than a poor presentation of a quality result.
