The Iron Tigers started off the 2022-2023 competition season in Waco, Tx during the first week of March with their robot named Titus. It was constructed in three weeks, programmed in two, and ready to set the stage in six weeks. A special thanks to Yates Flooring for donating a carpet for the team practice on! The game theme this year was Charged Up and simulated charging a community power grid.
Waco came with some learning curves, especially during the first week of the competition season. Many teams are typically still struggling to get their robot operational in week one. James Holloway, one of the FHS Robotics coaches, stated that this season required some additional strategies; the game required you to make links with cones and cubes placed in specific spots on the community side of your alliance team. Cones and cubes could be picked up from the field or from your team alliance loading areas from the other side of the field. So, alliances had to make a game strategy to which order and where to place the game pieces so they could score the most points possible. Then, the three alliance robots had to control the charging station and level it out at the end of the game by balancing on the station surface.
The team also strived to earn the Impact Award, which highlights their outreach efforts and achievements off the field and showed off their team spirit in the stands as the Iron Tigers fought through the qualification matches.
“Unfortunately, match randomization did not play in our favor,” said Nancy Schunke, one of the FHS Robotics coaches. “We were unable to make it into an alliance captain position by the end of qualification matches. But the #4 seat alliance captain selected us to join their alliance in the double bracket finals matches. Together, they fought hard and ended up finishing 4th alliance overall out of 40 teams in the competition.”
Holloway stated “the games are becoming more strategy-based and less defensive than they have been in the past. This requires a larger thought and design process when designing your competition robot for the year.” Holloway expressed that this year’s robot has been one of the best built yet by his robotics teams. “It consisted of a swerve drive base which makes it omni-directional and has an articulated claw mechanism with approximately 270 degrees of rotation. The claw mechanism was also attached to an elbow/wrist mechanism that would allow the claw to move up and down independently with approximately 330 degrees of rotation.”
Schunke explained that the robot was knocked over at one point in the competition, but the mechanisms built were fashioned to allow the drivers to push it upright and continue to play and score. “Not many robots this year had the ability to upright themselves if they tip over,” said Schunke.
The district event in Amarillo was their second competition fighting to earn enough district ranking point to make their way to the State UIL Championship in Houston, Tx. Again, the randomization of qualification matches fought against the Iron Tigers, but their fight, determination, and well-built robot received recognition by the #4 seat alliance again and was selected to play along with them in the double bracket finals matches.
The highlight of the entire finals match was when they went up against the #1 alliance and tied them with 106 points until it came down to the end game when one of the robots being “out of the community” or off the platform and engaged and theirs being in the community and engaged. In the end, the #1 alliance beat the Tigers by only a slight margin. "Being in that position and almost knocking out the best robots at this competition made the season for sure! In addition to our success on moving into semi-finals, we had two team members, Shelby Miller (11th grade) and Riley Holloway (10th grade), who were nominated for the FRC Dean’s List. This is an award for exceptional 10th and 11th grade students who participate in the FIRST Robotics program,” said Holloway.
Unfortunately, the Iron Tigers missed a State Championship invite by only 10 points. But they are fired up and already planning summer events and looking for a permanent place to practice and lay out carpet for the upcoming school year. Students are also actively working on building our FTC robotics teams in the middle schools as well as hoping to kick off and start several FLL teams within the next year or so. The future is bright as Team 5866 is Charged Up for 2023-24!