FIRST Competitions

After six weeks of the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into the fabrication of the robot, here is where it all pays off. The competitions run from early to late March each year, with the FIRST Championships in April. On the playing field, you are out to win, but gracious professionally. Off the field, you cooperate with the other teams. FIRST does not have long-standing rivalries like other sports, as a team may be your partner one match, but your opponent the next. And that is what gracious professionalism is. Learning to compete, but not violently, but then cooperate the rest of the time, to openly share ideas and concepts, to synergize together. This may should new and unique to rookies and newcomers, but this is what will fuel the industry of the future, competing while cooperating in an open and friendly environment.

UTC New England Regional (2005)

Thursday: The day of the practice rounds. As the name implies, this is the first day of any FIRST regional where teams test their robots and programming, and get a feel for their controls. Gus Robotics did exactly that, getting our drivers and human player valuable experience.

Friday: This is the first day of the real competition, where teams compete in at least 10 qualification rounds to rank them by most wins/losses/ties. Gus Robotics surprised everyone, by remaining low during the UTC Scrimmage and the practice rounds, until the actual rounds, and then we came out in full force. We remained within the top 5 teams for the entire day of Friday (9 matches), and for several matches we were the highest ranked team. We ended the day with 6 wins, 2 losses, and one tie, for an overall ranking of 5th place. We competed in several very heated matches, including one when our alliance of team 228, 178, and 271 dominated the playing field and set a high score for the competition of 87 points! Only time shall tell if that record is to be broken on Saturday.

Saturday: This was the second day of the competition, with the end of the qualification rounds and the elimination rounds. Gus continued to be a solid robot at scoring, averaging 4-5 tetras per match (one scored every 20-24 seconds!), and ended in 6th in the team rankings. For the elimination rounds, the top 8 teams get to pick two partners for the elimination rounds. Gus would have been an alliance captain, but Team 236, the Techno Ticks (ranked 4th), picked us as a partner as well as Team 195, the Cyber Knights. This was a rock-solid alliance with three excellent robots, and with this alliance in the quarterfinals, we once again set the high score for the regional, this time it was 96 points. Our alliance made it into the semifinals, until we lost to Teams 20 (The Rocketeers), 173 (RAGE), and 230 (GaelHawks) by 3 points. Our sister team, Team 1071 Max, along with Teams 69 (Team HYPER) and 126 (Gael Force), won the UTC Regional, landing themselves a spot at the National Championships. The Techno Ticks also won the Chairman's Award, the highest honor awarded to any FIRST team. They too will now be going to Nationals. Congratulations to teams 69, 126, 1071, and 236!

‹‹ Go back to the 2005 FIRST Competitions page.