Hello! One week ago, our team competed in our first regional of the season, the 2017 FRC Wisconsin Regional. Here’s a summary of what we did at the tournament.
Thursday: All members of the team arrived at Waukesha South at 7:00 AM for a quick team meeting before the tournament began. We left South at 7:15 so we could be at the arena with plenty of time to spare before the pits opened at 8:30. The Drivers’ Meeting was at 9:00, and from then on, we worked on updating our robot, until lunch at 11:00. Practice matches started after lunch, at 12:00. CORE participated in four practice matches on Thursday, and were paired with teams from across Wisconsin and Minnesota. Practice matches ended at 6:00, but members of the Mechanical, Controls, and Programming subteams stayed until the pits closed at 8:00 to improve the robot.
Friday: CORE’s team members arrived at Waukesha South at around 6:45 for a second morning meeting before beginning the day. We left South at 7:00 so we could get to the arena before opening ceremonies, which started started at 8:30. There were many great leaders and speakers such as Wisconsin State Representative Adam Neylon, Waukesha County Executive Paul Farrow, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Wisconsin State Senator Leah Vukmir, and GE Healthcare Executive Tim Nustad. They discussed how being involved in FIRST will positively impact the rest of our lives. After the ceremonies, we were ready to start competing! Qualification matches started at 9:00, and our first one was at 9:56. CORE was on the blue alliance, along with 6421 and 2506. The red alliance for this match comprised of 2077, 5855, and 4549. We won this match, 225 to 180. Our second match was at 11:20. CORE was on the red alliance this time, paired with 6643 and 1091. We faced off against 6670, 2472, and 3381. We won this match, 188 to 145. We were the first match after lunch break, at 12:40. For this match, we were on the blue alliance again, paired with 930 and 2472. We faced 2358, 5096, and 5976, and we ended up losing, 185 to 112. Our next match was less than half an hour later, at 1:15. We played against 6223, 5096, and 2143 and worked with our alliance members, 4786 and 706, to win, 311 to 268. Our next match was at 2:32, and we won that round as well, with the help of our alliance partners, 4804 and 2202. We competed for that win against 5148, 4531, and 1716, and the final score was 302 to 235. Qualification match 49 was important to us, not only because we competed with a future elimination alliance partner, 3130, but we also scored what was, at the time, the highest match score at the tournament. Along with 3130, we were on the blue alliance with 1985, against 2202, 3197, and 6421. The final score of this match was 367 to 196. Qualification match 60 was intriguing, since we had to play it twice. CORE was in the blue alliance, with 1306 and 2194, and we competed against 2220, 93, and 537. The first time that this match was played, we lost, but the judges ruled that there was a field fault and the match was to be replayed. The teams and alliances stayed the same during the replay, but the second time we won, 308 to 201. This was also the last match of the day. After a brief team meeting in the stands to go over the results of the day, members of the Mechanical, Controls, and Programming subteams stayed until 8:00 again to complete daily maintenance and prepare the robot for the next day.
Saturday: Lots of us arrived at South at 6:45 AM again, so that we could make it to the arena early again. We had the first match on Saturday, at 8:45 AM, so as soon as we arrived, the subteams got to work getting everything ready to go so we could be queued quickly. For this match, we were paired with 1732 and 3596. Due to control problems on our robot, we lost 257 to 280 to the red alliance, which was comprised of 1714, 3418, and 1675. We had nearly two hours from then until our next match, at 10:09. For the second match of the day, we were paired with 4296 and 3081, and we competed against 930, 1781, and 5552. We won this match, 345 to 216. For our final qualifications match, we were paired with 6223 and 5586. We competed against 4198, 2531, and 1792, and we won, 288 to 285.
Then came alliance selection. CORE was seeded first at the end of qualifications, so we got to pick first. We picked 3130, the Errors, as our first pick because they had a consistent gear scoring ability and a floor gear pickup, which we needed in case we were to drop a gear. We picked 1091, Oriole Assault, because they were a very consistent climber who had a good gear manipulator and could play defense.
Once the alliances were selected, finals started. We played and won the first two quarterfinal matches, 445 to 238, and 473 to 286, respectively, against the eighth seeded alliance, which was comprised of 4786, 269, and 2830. Those two wins sent our alliance to the semifinals. Our semifinal blue alliance, was comprised of 1675, 1732, and 2194. In the first semifinal match, we lost 271 to 255. We came back in the second round, winning 310 to 262. However, our robot suffered mechanical difficulties during the second match, and after two time-outs’ worth of maintenance, we were able to get it up and running again. Despite this, we lost the final Semifinals match, 317 to 309. This eliminated us from the competition, after 15 hard fought games.
In conclusion, we were proud of our performance at this regional. We seeded first for the first time ever and ended up winning the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control award. We also gave more safety demonstrations than ever before. We are proud of all team members that have been involved throughout this tournament and the year, and we look forward to our next competition in two weeks in La Crosse.
