GHS Robotics Team Competing This Week at National Competition
April 16, 2004
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Imagine one spring Wednesday afternoon, putting a football team on a bus.  When that team returns home on Saturday, they have played their entire season of games.  Their opponents are unknown, their competition times are undetermined and if the quarterback is injured, there isn't anyway to substitute a player.  If you can even imagine this scenario, then you have only begun to realize what it takes for the Greenville High School robotics team to compete at a regional competition.  National competition is the scenario times ten and it is a Herculean task faced by Team 148 every year.

The Lone Star Regional held April 1-3 at Reliant Arena in Houston, Texas is not a state competition, but is held for teams all across the nation.  In the FIRST program, teams can choose where they compete during a six weeks regional competition calendar.  This is the only choice in the process; everything else is determined by computer selection and machine ability.

Once a robot is built, it is shipped away and the team must uncrate their creation, put it back together and be ready for the practice rounds.  Although the team had six weeks to create the robot, is has not been touched since it was crated and send to the competition site.  Electronics must be established, gears be adjusted, and drivers reacquainted with the controls.  If the machine is not ready by practice time, then the team loses any opportunity to get a test drive in before competition starts.

FIRST is designed for students to understand how classroom concepts take them to the real world.  Reality sets in as competition begins.  Using a system of alliances and opponents, teams are paired by computers.  The team never knows what its ally can accomplish or its opponents achieve until they are in a round together.  It is the luck of the draw during seeding matches, sometimes your ally is a perfect match and rounds go smoothly.  Other times, your ally is an incomplete machine or one with mechanical problems and you must take on the competition alone.  Without a functioning ally, your machine is in a situation of two against one.

To achieve a seeding rank that enables you to move into the quarter-finals, a team has to be one of the top eight teams or be chosen as an ally with one of the top eight teams.  While some team members have been busy driving the robot, other team members have spent the last 24 hours, scouting and finding just the perfect match for the robot.  Placing in the top eight gives you control of your destiny in the competition.

Once the final eight allies are made, the slate is cleared and a new competition begins.  In double elimination tournaments the teams work to move from quarter-finals to semi-finals to the final match.  Earning the right, means eliminating your opponents.  If at any time your machine or the machine of your ally fails, you are finished.  You have to keep this 140 pound machine moving and completing some very difficult task.

When it comes down to the final match, once again, the scores are cleared and it is the best two out of three matches.  Those two teams in the final rounds take their two allies with them to the medal round and will be either deemed the Championship team or the Finalist team.  No other team medals or placements are awarded but for those two teams.

Now, hopefully by reading this scenario you have some understanding of what the GHS Robotics team must face when competing.  I have seen shirts that say, "Second place is the first loser".  However, in FIRST second place is another winner!

We attend national competition in April 14 - April 18.  We go from facing 44 teams to facing 450 teams.  First we will have to be successful through our division of about 85 teams and then if we "win" the division, we move into the finals.

This article was contributed by Vanessa Pope.