This past weekend, our team arrived at McNeil High School just down the road from our shop for our final off-season competition, Round Rock Robot Rodeo or RRRR. We ended up walking away as Event Finalists, but we have so many stories that I would like to share with you all!
With a team of 10 student and had 7 mentors, the students were free to fail and fail again in the name of learning. We selected our driver/operating paring consisting of Junior Shelby and Junior Jared alternating between the two roles, Junior Jay reclaimed her role as Human Player and Senior Jackson rounded out the drive team as the Technician. The main changes here were the three different coaches are students had to guide them. Mentors Alex and Pam switched off frequently, while Senior Jack stepped in for a few rounds on Saturday!
Off Season Changes
Round Rock Robot Rodeo was a unique experience for a number of reasons I’d like to highlight!
- The ROUND ROCK: A record that was placed in the middle of the field and allowed another PARK spot for robots in the middle of the field. This was such a fun addition to the matches, watching the robots fight over the spot over the record. This was used in the practice matches and up until Qualification Match 3.
- To continue with the theme, a record was signed by all the volunteers and was presented to the Volunteer of the Year Award Recipient.
- Protectors of the Field: A plushie Shark was given to the top 6 teams who did the least amount of damage, or prevented damage to the field during the event.
- 5788 Eagle Spec Ops
- 6357 The Spring Konstant
- 9054 Johnson City Joules
- 9981 Lady Cans 2
- 9999 LASA 2
- 5414 Pearadox
- 2vs2: Only 18 teams signed up for RRRR and made it over to the event. To allow all the teams a fair match schedule and a regular length event, the matches were played in alliances of 2 teams each. This decision made for a great change, as teams needed to prioritize an offensive strategy. This made for a great viewing experience, as every team truly got to play the game to the best of their abilities!
- Round Robin: Due to the small number of teams, a normal tournament bracket would be difficult to do, so the decision was made to play a round-robin style playoffs with 6 alliances of 3 teams each. This meant every team was picked to play, which helped emphasize the fun aspect of off-season competitions.
Qualification Matches
We spent the past few weeks, after TRI building a 4-note-autonoumous path that would shoot while moving, utilizing Lowrider full capacity! Any chance we had, we ran our path to secure a great start to our matches. In 70% of our matches, we secured the Melody Ranking Point, by scoring more notes than the required threshold, 14 for 2v2 and 18 for 3v3. This was a major accomplish for the programmers, especially Jackson who led the creation of the path
Playoffs
When Alliance Selection came around, the Alliance 5 captain, 418 Purple Haze from LASA, offered us the first spot on their alliance along with 5417 Eagle Robotics. We lost our first two matches against Alliances 2 and 1, but won the other 3!
With the number of wins tied between Alliances 1, 2 and 5, the autonomous score was the first tie-breaker. As mentioned previously, that was our focus at this event, and we secured our spot in the finals against Alliance 3: 6357 The Spring Konstant, 3847 Spectrum, and 9993 Tangerine Firecracker, Orange Dynamite’s second robot.
We congratulate Alliance 3 on their RRRR victory!
