Texas UIL State Championship: What Happened?

As we announced in the last blog post, we made it to state championships! Hooray! It is such a big accomplishment for our team, especially since this is only our rookie season. We had such a good time and here's how it went:

Day #1: Packing up and heading out

We met up at the school to pack up all the materials and Sprocket (our robot) to get ready to head down to the Alamodome. We had to coordinate this part very carefully since we had a short window to unload at the Alamodome and get set up in our pit before inspections.

Arriving was pretty amazing. There were so many teams, and so much happening, especially with the FIRST Robotics Competition getting set up at the same time. (By the way, their robots are so cool and HUGE! It's crazy! Our school could never do something like that. It's just too big!) We settled into the pit fairly quickly and even walked around to look at other teams before we went to our inspection.

Arriving at the Alamodome

Setting up our pit

Having fun waiting for inspections!

Day #1: Inspections

Field inspection was first. This is where the officials check to make sure that our connections between the robot and controllers are set up properly and that the programs for the robot will stop and start correctly. Everything went smoothly, and we got many complements on the robot from the inspectors and some of the referees that were hanging around. Robot inspection came second. This is where the referees and other officials make sure that the robot fits all of the rules about motors, servos, dimensions, and other things like that. And... we passed, don't worry. Nothing really special happened during inspections, but that's to be expected. The real excitement comes during the matches!

Fields are set up for inspection and matches tomorrow

Posing with the trophies! (These aren't the trophies for our division)

Day #2: Qualification Matches

Day 2 of competition. We hit the ground running. We competed in the second, ninth, fifteenth, seventeenth, and twenty second qualification matches. We racked up a total of 703 points in those five matches! Our alliance partners were all awesome and we owe our success in these matches partly to them.

Thank you to our alliance partners:

Team #17028, DuMoore Robotics

Team #16617, Nazareth Robotics

Team #5670, Da Vinci Dragons Gold

Team #16215, Club Penguin

Team #17198, Wildcat Robotics 1

Competing in a qualification match with our alliance partner Team #16215, Club Penguin

Making emergency changes to Sprocket (our robot) between qualification matches

But the real question is did the qualification matches help us qualify? The answer is...YES! we ranked seventh seed after the qualification rounds

Day #2: Elimination Rounds

The pressure was really on at this point. We began to scout for potential alliance partners, since it was extremely likely we would be making it to elimination rounds. Most of the teams that were ranked above us were way out of our league, and we probably wouldn't get chosen by any of them. That left the couple teams that ranked below us and one really stood out to us: Team #15764, West Texas Robotics. Not only did our robots have different abilities to complement one another, they were extremely friendly and top notch teammates. They were willing to rewrite their autonomous program to better fit the one we already had and to avoid collisions. They did some other things that really showed Gracious Professionalism and their willingness to help out our team even though we had just competed against them in a qualification match.

Nonetheless, the team became the fourth alliance captain and West Texas Robotic became our first pick and alliance partner. We set to work adjusting autonomous programs and running the robots on the practice field. Robots were now ready, set, and going to the field for the first semifinal match.

Alliance selection

Setting up our robots for elimination matches

Per the guidelines for elimination rounds in the game manuals, our alliance played the first seed alliance. They were a little intimidating, but we remained confident and powered through. The first match tested our alliance's courage a little bit (we lost 210 to 306), but somehow it seemed to fire us up even more for the second match. And you know what, I think that loss was just what we needed to come back and win the second semifinal match 264 to 269. Woohoo! That was probably the greatest match we played all day! With the confidence boost back up, the third match was just around the corner. Sadly, but not too sadly, we lost the third semifinal match 76 to 303 due to some mechanical failures on both of our alliance's robots. I guess it was just the rotten luck catching up with us.

Running our autonomous programs in the semifinal match

Strategic planning in the pit between elimination rounds

Reflections:

We didn't make it to the finals, but that doesn't mean we were bummed at all. We probably would have celebrated even if we had scored zero points in every single match and placed last. What made this competition so fun and exciting and overall just an awesome experience was getting to see other teams in action with their own robots and making new friends and alliances with teams from all over the (ginormous) state of Texas. We greatly appreciated meeting Team #15764, West Texas Robotics and competing with them as our alliance partner in the semifinal rounds, and we owe our success in those matches partly to them and their awesome robot and attitude! Thank you Team #15764, West Texas Robotics!

Thank you to the best alliance partners of the season!

We want to send another thank you to the referees, FTA's, volunteers, other officials, coaches, parents, mentors, and everybody else who made this season possible. we could not have done it without any of you, and it was an amazing season to participate as a rookie team and get some of the experiences that we had. Thank you volunteers and coaches!