Wow. Just wow. This was possibly one of the craziest events CORE has been a part of! So much happened July 28th and 29th at the Mukwonago Robotics Offseason Competition hosted by FRC Team 930.
On Friday the 28th, the event began at 9 AM, when multiple teams hosted different workshops about various themes relating to robotics, such as marketing your team or using advanced programming techniques. First off, we want to thank team 930, as well as teams 1792, 8701, and 6381 for hosting workshops. After three different sessions, we were ready to begin the actual tournament!
We had our main driver and operator working our swerve robot, which started off strong with 2 wins in a row. After that, Swerve got a bit unlucky with qual matchups, going 2-5 in our next 8 matches, ending with a 4-6 record.
Tank was where the real fun began. With their rookie drive team, all of them were ready to go! But just as their first match began, they lost all communication with their robot. They didn’t move at all during the match. After that, they spent almost 5 straight hours trying anything and everything to fix the robot. We missed every single qual match on Friday. Just as the last match began, though, we suddenly got communications back after replacing almost everything on our controls board. After the last match, we tested the robot on the field. It worked! Finally! So, the next day, we got our robot on the field, and it worked! Even though we lost the first match we moved in, all of us were so excited that the robot worked!
In our next two matches, we won by 64 and 3 respectively. In the final match, we ended up losing by 30.Our final rank was 20th out of 21.
It was now time for alliance selections! Swerve placed 12th overall, and tank, who had missed 6 matches the day before, ranked 20th out of 21 teams. As more and more captains chose their alliance partners, it was looking as though swerve was going to get into a captain spot, and sure enough. One pick later, Swerve’s captain is on the field representing the seventh alliance. They had two picks in a row, and selected team 2202 BEAST Robotics and 6381 Red Raider Robotics as alliance partners. As the picks circled back to the top 2 teams, Tank heard their name called for the second alliance. One pick later, all alliances were set. Seeing as there were only seven alliances, the number 1 alliance immediately advanced to the second round.
After alliance sections and a short lunch break, both CORE robots were ready to compete in their first match in playoffs, which happened to be against each other. It was a close one that went back and forth all match. In the end, Tank’s alliance won 154-135. Swerve headed to the lower bracket, while tank stayed in the upper bracket. Swerve played their next match first, and it was even closer than the first one. It looked like they were about to advance to the next round in the lower bracket. They went into the endgame with a small lead, and it came down to the last second, but swerve’s alliance couldn’t dock and engage the Charging Station. The other alliance completed the triple dock, finalizing their win and eliminating our swerve robot from the competition.
All eyes went down to our tank robot, which was our team’s last hope. Tank played the match after that, winning 125-98. Our entire alliance was super excited after the second win, and after scouting a couple more matches, we were ready for our semi-finals match against the number 1 alliance! When the time began, everything worked great! We were doing good up until about the halfway point. Our robot was hit from the side, then pushed into the opponent’s community. We got out, but not before 2 penalties were given to our alliance. In the end, we lost by 11. After a quick strategy meeting with our other alliance members, we went back onto the field for our lower bracket semi-finals. We had scouted the alliance we were playing a few times, and we knew what we had to do. We pulled out an incredible 172-122 win and we were in the finals! No one could believe it! After one whole day and six matches being defective, we were in the finals! Our excitement unfortunately didn’t last long. We lost both finals matches quickly, but all of us were so excited for how well our team as a whole did!
We want to thank team 930, the Mukwonago Bears, for hosting this amazing event. We can’t wait to compete with you all next year!
For more info, check out these links.
