On February 26th and 27th, the Upper School Robotics Team competed in the Southern New England Regional Championships with the goal of making it to the World Championship. The team’s work culminated in this one event, with the stakes never higher.
The upper school team prepared for this competition by building a new robot that would level the playing field among the top teams in the region. The team also prepared various game strategies for a rapidly evolving game based on the best teams making tweaks to their strategy from the early season. To adapt, the team decided to take inspiration from other competitions to figure out a game plan
Connor Emmert, Adam Shaff, Jack Barrett, David Luo, Ryan Chang-Wu, Alex Savoulides, and Brendan Kilpatrick came down to Connecticut a day before the competition to put the finishing touches on the robot and get ready for the tough competition the day after. Various team members stayed up to ensure peak performance on competition day and minimize the issues prevalent in testing before the competition.
The first day started rough, with a loss in the first match due to our team’s faulty pneumatic system. The robot’s code also did not work correctly during the match, which messed up the autonomous runs. The team morale stayed high, and the team rapidly fixed the problems that plagued it in the previous match with focus and the desire to achieve success. In the next match, the team had a hard-fought loss that was very close and could have gone either way.
With a 0-2 record, the team considered other options for strategy and fine-tuning what they had practiced. Their newfound strategy and strong alliance pairing in the next match was enough to gain them their first win of the tournament in convincing fashion. Although this was a significant win, the team was still hard at work on the code, and there were potential issues with the climbing system of the robot and the intake of the robot. The rest of the afternoon went relatively well, with the team gaining some wins due to their opponents getting disqualified by rules.
The second day, however, ended the team’s hopes. Their robot got flipped in the day’s first match, causing a loss. Unfortunately, the team could not go on to the elimination bracket.
The tournament disappointed the team as they did not qualify for the World Championship. Next year, the team hopes to win more titles for the school and improve on this year.
