NorCal Championships!
Stella Seo
NorCal 2013-14 FTC Championships
The day, to be honest, was rather hectic. We finished our judging session last night, the 22nd. Despite being the last team of the night for the judges, we brought energy to our presentation, and we were quick, concise, and smooth with our answers. Unfortunately, Claire wasn’t feeling well enough to present, so we covered for her. Thankfully she was feeling well enough to come to competition today, so that’s great! No team event is truly complete with a missing member.
We had the luxury of arriving relatively late in the morning. Our sister team, Geek Squad, had to arrive super early for their judging session, and they had brought all the supplies with them. Unfortunately, we were on opposite wings for pits, so whenever we needed something, we had to trek all the way across the gym. After two trips, Jennifer brought back a small toolbox as our own.
Before the opening ceremony, we were getting acquainted with the teams around us and what their robots could do. It was pretty cool—plus we were situated next to 7641 MSET Betta, who happened to be our alliance partner when we were Winning Alliance Captain at Sequoia HS.
The opening ceremony was as per usual. A cool twist: a friend of ours was MC’ing the tournament! It was pretty great to see Charlie back with the mic. He’s a great MC.
We had some pretty great matches. In match 7, we were with 5157 The Metal That Moves against 6052 Tigertron and 6002 Basilisks; we won 245 to 149!
In match 13 we were with 6165 MSET Cuttlefish against 6024 The Enterprisers and 4963 NOVA; we won 195 to 140. It was a really intense match. 6165 is actually a sister team of Betta, so it was was nice to have the chance to work with 2/3 of the fish teams. It was a really good match against 6024 and 4963, both of whom are known to be strong teams.
In match 20, we were with 5353 Pink Fruffy Unicorns against 7391 Error 7391 Not Found and 6223 Evasive Robotics; we won 237 to 157. It was interesting to work with 5353 again; we were alliance partners at the Valley Christian Qualifier, as well. Also, one of their members is Youngju’s brother.
In match 36 we were with 3873 Scotbotics against 5901 Divide by Zero and 5773 Ink and Metal; we won 224 to 84. It was nice to work with Scotbotics again, with whom we had our first ever match at Sequoia.
In match 42, we were with 6038 CHS Rattlers against 455 Pew Pew Lazer Beams and 548 Geek Squad; we won 255 to 175. That match was pretty intense: it was terrible that we had to go against our sister team.
Our sixth matches were canceled for lack of time. By the end of qualifying matches, we were once again first in seeding!
As first alliance captain, we took 5220 RoboKnights as our first pick. They’re a nearby team with whom we’ve worked on multiple occasions, and they’ve always proven themselves to be a strong team. As our second pick, we took 548 Geek Squad, our sister team.
Sem1Match 1 featured 7591 and 548 against 6148 Orange PiRoBEARics and 4475 Purple Reign. We lost that match 256 to 315.
Sem1Match2 featured 7591 and 5220 against 6148 and 5157 The Metal That Moves. We won, 324 to 241. Incidentally, we also scored the highest match score of the day.
Sem1Match3 featured 7591 and 5220 with 6148 and 5157; both alliances brought their winning partners up with them. It was a close match, with us winning 237 to 218. We moved on to the final match, thus guaranteeing at least us a spot to Super Regionals.
6148 was very gracious as they lost: they offered us their notes on the opposing finalist alliance, and we truly appreciated that. They wished us best of luck.
In the first match of finals, 7591 and 5220 were against 3873 and either 6024 or 7907 Stark Industries. We won 273 to 217. In the second match, we lost 154 to 244. Our last final match was absolutely heart-wrenchingly intense. Though we were up by 20 at the end of autonomous, the opposing alliance quickly made up for it in block pickup. In the last 30 seconds, we raised our flag and went to double hang with 5220, but in our haste, we knocked off one of our alliance partner’s hooks. They started to hang anyway, but were half a second short. That half a second loss lost that game, 165 to 184.
At first, there was a score mix-up, and it looked as though we had won. It was great to watch our neon yellow portion of the stands light up as we cheered our successes. Unfortunately, that didn’t last very long, as it turns out that the scores were switched.
It was disappointing that we could not team carry both RoboKnights and Geek Squad to Super Regionals. However, at the awards ceremony, we learned that because of some award overlapping, RoboKnights would also be coming with us to Super Regionals.
Our coach, Gary Yeap, won the Compass Award, which was really great; we know he truly deserves it. Also, a team from our school, 5151 Infinity, won Inspire, which was truly awesome. Another team from our school, 7303 RoboAvatars, won 3rd Inspire and Motivate, which was pretty cool too! Our school’s teams are obviously very strong, and it’s nice to be part of that community.
At the end of the awards ceremony, it was about 8:30PM on a Sunday night, and it was far too late to go eat dinner with our teams at Hometown Buffet, where we had made a reservation. Instead, we took a rain check for the following Saturday and went home to our soft beds, where we took long, well-deserved naps until it was time for school.