Wolverines compete at regional robotics tournament

CHS Freshmen take third place with brick-stacking robots

CHS Varsity team robot stacking blocks. Photo courtesy of Jeremiah Beckett

On Dec. 7, the CHS Wolverines Robotics teams traveled to Wasilla for the Alaska FIRST Technical Challenge Southcentral regional qualifiers, competing against 20 teams from central Alaska. CHS sent all three high school robotics teams to the regional event, represented by 11 students traveling for competition.

This year’s game, titled “Skystone,” consisted of the robots having to move and stack giant Lego bricks called “stones” with several ways to score points. At competition, teams have five primary matches where they are paired randomly with alliance teams, match results and scoring determine rankings for moving to semifinals.

Interestingly, our CHS teams got paired as alliance partners early in the event and expected to win, but, unfortunately, between robot woes and competition jitters, lost the matches. Starting the day with unexpected losses didn’t deter the teams; they regrouped and continued forward optimistically.

The day was filled with some hard losses and big wins, with the final event rankings placing our CHS Freshmen in third, Sophomores in 16th and our varsity team in last place. We did expect our teams to place higher, but, without the opportunity to attend regular season events due to ferry cuts and school budgets, the kids knew they were walking into the event with a slight handicap compared to the other teams.

The CHS varsity team took the event standings particularly hard, having lots of robot hiccups and losing all five qualifier matches. Comprised mostly of seniors, this year’s varsity team is Cordova’s first FTC robotics team that formed four years ago that had the opportunity to attend the World Robotics Competition in Texas and were the Alaska state champions in the 2017-2018 season. For seniors on the team, they knew they probably wouldn’t advance to State and this might be their last competition.

CHS Varsity and Freshman teams on left competing in semi-finals against Dimond Schools, CHS won matches 2-0 to move on to finals. Photo courtesy of Jeremiah Beckett

Moving into the semi-finals, the top four teams got to choose their alliance partners. With great resolve and some calculated risk, the freshman team that was ranked third selected the CHS varsity team as their alliance partners, demonstrating some of the core values FIRST is all about. The excitement with the kids grew instantly and the first-ever CHS robot alliance moved into the semi-final.

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With renewed energy, the CHS alliance stepped into the semi-final matches. Based on practice, the teams knew they could score very high together and, while they didn’t reach full scoring potential, they did win the first two matches with a commanding lead to advance to the finals. In the finals the teams lost both matches by a few points but succeeded in taking third and fourth place overall for the event, earning both teams a spot to the state competition in February.

The FTC Alaska southcentral regionals were an exciting event for all the CHS teams and brought home two more robotics trophies for the school. The varsity team will get another opportunity to compete, the sophomores applied for a wildcard spot to state, and the freshmen are ready to go. The students will continue to work on robot improvements and driver practice until the state competition in February, where they’ll be looking to rise again above the competition.

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