Olympia School District high school teams competed the inaugural FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Olympia League Event on Saturday, November 22, at Jefferson Middle School. Fifteen teams from Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater and Shelton competed in the first of two League Events, which combined will determine these 15 teams’ seeding at the Southern Washington Inter-League Championships on January 10, 2015 at Wilson High School in Tacoma.
Teams competed in this year’s FTC challenge, “Cascade Effect” (see this video animation.) This is an exciting game which combines strategy and technical challenges for teams to sort out and prioritize as they design and build a Tetrix-based robot programmed in Robot-C to tackle this year’s game. The robot must perform autonomously for the first part of the match, then under two-person remote control for the remainder of the two-and-a-half minute match. The competition takes place in a 12 foot square arena with four robots operating simultaneously as two randomly selected alliances.
The Crew (team #8563) from North Thurston High School topped the standings, winning 7 of their 8 matches. Oly Cow (team #6424) from Olympia High School ended up in second in the rankings with a promising start in their attempt to retrace their path last year to the FTC World Championships. Two other Olympia High School teams rounded out the top four with Bearly Digital (team #8547) and Robot C Robot Do (team #8548) placing third and fourth respectively. OSD veteran teams the Capital Gear Grinders from Capital High School (#5061) and the Avanti Avengers (#4448) from Avanti High School placed 7th and 8th.
All the students from each team learned a tremendous amount in this first competition of the 2014 season and ideas for modified robot designs were plentiful. Rookie and veteran teams alike all now have three weeks to refine their robots before the second League Event on Saturday, December 13th at the Capital High School Commons (lower parking lot). Admission is free, and the public is welcome to come and cheer on your favorite team in “Robotics as a Sport”. Matches will run 1:30 to 5:00 on Saturday afternoon.
The final standings from the first event and school affiliations are presented below:
Olympia League 11-22-14
Team Rankings
| Rank | Team # | Team Name | QP | QP | Highest | Matches |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 8563 | The Crew | 14 | 448 | 140 | 8 |
| 2 | 6424 | Oly Cow | 12 | 448 | 397 | 8 |
| 3 | 8547 | Bearly Digital | 10 | 477 | 200 | 8 |
| 4 | 8548 | Robot C Robot Do | 10 | 459 | 170 | 8 |
| 5 | 6421 | ThunderBots | 9 | 397 | 200 | 8 |
| 6 | 7299 | T-Wolves | 9 | 357 | 160 | 8 |
| 7 | 5061 | Captial Gear Grinders | 8 | 524 | 397 | 8 |
| 8 | 4448 | Avanti Avengers | 8 | 415 | 170 | 8 |
| 9 | 7705 | NT Ninja Turtles | 8 | 364 | 141 | 8 |
| 10 | 8545 | Avanti Avengers | 7 | 420 | 170 | 8 |
| 11 | 9515 | The Fedora Trio | 7 | 298 | 120 | 8 |
| 12 | 9184 | Blue Bearries | 6 | 326 | 150 | 8 |
| 13 | 8546 | Ultraviolete Catastrophe | 4 | 504 | 166 | 8 |
| 14 | 8030 | Steel Wings | 4 | 429 | 140 | 8 |
| 15 | 7742 | Electric Sheep | 4 | 394 | 196 | 8 |
QP (Total Qualification Points) – 2 Points for a WIN, 1 Point for a TIE, 0 Points for a LOSS.
RP (Total Ranking Points) – Ranking points are awarded using the losing alliance’s score in each match.
Highest (Highest Match Score) – The highest match score awarded to the team.