Ottumwa Robotics Qualifier

I will preface this post with three things:
1. I have never been more proud of a group of Central City students.
2. You can see photos/videos on our Facebook page.
3. This is going to be a long post. It's worth it. (look at bold sections for short/sweet version)


Wildcat robotics took two teams to the Ottumwa Qualifier: 4156 (our mostly senior team that competed last year) and 5097, freshman students from my robotics class. 

At a qualifying tournament, each team gets to play 6 "round robin" matches and then the top 4 teams in those matches (based on points and win percentage) get to advance to the finals.

In the first 6 matches for 4156, we did fairly well. During one match we fell over and didn't score any points, but our alliance helped win that match. Several times, we scored 80 points. At the end, we were in 4th place out of 16 teams, which was enough to go to the finals.

The first 6 matches for 5097 couldn't have gone any worse. The first 5 matches we had technical problems or programming problems and our robot didn't move at all. It was discouraging for the kids, but I told them to keep trying, and they did. Between each match the reprogrammed the entire robot & made some hardware changes as well. Finally, in the 6th match we went out and scored some points. We ended up in 8th or 9th place after the initial matches because of our alliances, but it wasn't enough to move on.

Then we came to the alliance selection, where the top 4 teams get to pick teams to move into the finals with them. Team 4156 was the 4th seed, but the 2nd seed picked the 3rd seed, so we got to move up into 3rd (which was a big advantage, because #1 plays #4 and #2 plays #3--meaning we didn't have to face #1 seed in the first finals round).  When it came our time to pick, Tyler chose a team who declined our offer (they wanted to be with the 4th ranked team). We were shocked at their declination, because the rules state that they couldn't go with the other team, which they of course didn't know. So, Tyler picked our 5097 team to be the alliance. I was thrilled with the choice, because 5097 worked hard all day and finally got things going in the 6th and final round.

Finals are best 2/3. We faced the #2 seed. We won the first match, but 5097 broke their tank treads and their arm. We had to call a time out, and they went to work, fixing the treads & completely removing the arm and changing strategies. We ended up winning round 2, despite being tipped over onto our backs.

We moved on to face the #1 seeds, which just so happened to be both Oskaloosa teams. We lost round 1 by quite a few, and then won round 2. Which meant it all came down to round 3. We ended up losing 127-102 as the team scored with only 2 seconds left in the match. 5097 played excellent defense, and 4156 got an 80 point stack, but it wasn't quite enough. Oskaloosa had two excellent robots that also had a good autonomous scoring method. 

So, despite awesome driving by Noah & Lucas, we finished 2nd. Not enough for a trip to state. However, the team who wins 1st & 2nd place in the overall achievement award, the Inspire Award, also gets to move on. Team 4156 was nominated for a couple of awards which we didn't win. We were surprised to win 1st place for the Inspire award, which I fully believe our team deserved. Which also means, we get to go to state! 

I was so proud of Tyler for picking our freshman team, who had had many failures that day. It truly could have cost them a trip to the state tournament. It was the ultimate display of gracious professionalism, and our kids had so much fun working together. They deserved the overall award because of the performance of their robot, their awesome interview with the judges, and mostly their dedication to getting more kids in our school interested in robotics--they can even get freshman basketball players to skip a basketball game to compete at robotics today, and made it worth it to them by allowing them to move on into the finals as an alliance team. In their interview, Tyler talked about leadership skills, and he showed some great leadership today. It was a great display of loyalty and school spirit, and it paid off!

There was much celebrating, but we were all exhausted after a long, emotional, tense, exciting day. Now, 4156 is ready to prepare for state competition on February 25! 

3 trophies, not too shabby!