NorCal Regional Championship

voiftc
Feb 27, 2017
2 min read

On Sunday, Voltage of Imagination competed in the NorCal Regional Championship hosted in Newark. The team won all 5 of its qualifying rounds to become the second seed in the Silicon division, only 10 ranking points lower than the first seed.

After extensive deliberation, team 7591 graciously declined the invitation of first seed 6982 Metal Magicians. Opting instead to be the captain of its own alliance, Voltage of Imagination invited its sister team 8865 The Intersect and 6148 Orange Pi RoBEARics to join its alliance. The alliance went on to win the division elimination rounds to face the winning alliance of the Gold division, captained by 5220 RoboKnights.

In the first match of the event finals, the team lost a well fought match due to minor hardware problems. However, VOI came back in the second match to score a close victory with alliance partner Orange Pi RoBEARics. In the third match, the referees rewarded the opposing alliance a nauseating 120 penalty points for inadvertent robot contact, tipping the scale in favor of the teams from the Gold division.

In the end, what matters is not the number of balls that fall into the vortex nor whether or not the robot drops the cap ball. Instead, it is the influence that one makes on the surrounding community that truly makes an impact. Voltage of Imagination takes to heart its mission to spread STEM concepts to diverse groups in the community, frequently hosting events to give opportunities to the less fortunate. The team’s intense passion for propagating the ideals of FIRST won it a well-deserved Connect Award. VOI was also nominated for the Think and Inspire awards due to its detailed engineering notebook.

Voltage of Imagination will advance to the West Super Regional Championship at Tacoma in March, where it will meet dozens of other esteemed teams from the western United States. As rookie member Howard Shan proudly proclaimed, “[Team 7591 is] now one step closer to the Festival of Champions.”