Teams advance in robotics tournament

Hannah Hetzler, co-captain of the IronMen Robotics Team, recaps the most recent First Tech Challenge (FTC) qualifying tournament held at Tigard High School last weekend:

Our high school has four robotics teams, three of which competed at Tigard High School this past weekend  alongside 19 other teams. The three teams that competed were Aeterna, Tiger Team, and IronMen.  IronMen is our all female team.

The tournament comprises of four parts --  in-room judging, two table judging, a qualifying tournament and a final tournament. We are judged on design, presentation, community involvement, success, strategy, and how well rounded of a team we are (i.e. 
how well the work put into the robot was spread out, not just one person working by themselves).

IronMen (the all female team, also a first year team) went undefeated in the qualifying tournament, and was the top ranked team moving into finals. They finished in second place alongside their alliance partners, the Tiger Team. Aeterna was also a finalist team, finishing fourth. Out of the 22 teams present, four teams qualified to be alliance captains, two of these spots were held by Newberg. Alliance captains are the top four teams in the qualifying tournament and pick two other teams to compete with them in the finals.

During the award ceremony there are ten awards. Each award has three finalists. Ironmen was a finalist for every award except for the Think Award, which they had won at their previous tournament. They received the Finalist Award, which is for being one of the top two alliances in the tournament, as well as the Control Award, which was for an innovative approach to programming the robot for the FTC challenge.

Also, IronMen received first place in the Inspire Award, which is the biggest award the tournament has to offer. It is based off of a combination of the team’s engineering log, judges interviews, overall performance, community involvement, and
teamwork. As IronMen qualified for state at their previous tournament the qualification the award deemed was passed to the next award in line.

The Tiger team also received the Finalist Award as they were IronMen’s alliance in the finals, and also received the Innovate Award for having a well thought out and executed design. The Aeterna team received the Community outreach award for their work in bringing in more interest to the FTC game.

Overall it was a very successful tournament for all teams, and we are looking forward to competing at State.

NOTE:  The challenge this year is called FTC BLOCK PARTY! It’s played on a 12’x12’ square field with approximately 1’-high walls and a soft foam mat playing surface. Two randomly selected teams are paired together as an Alliance to play one match against a second Alliance. Alliances are designated as either “Red” or “Blue. This video explains the challenge and how this years game is played.