It was a whirlwind in St Louis on April 26-28. Both the weather and the robotics competition.
With 400 teams from 7 countries including 20 teams from Canada, OP Robotics Team 2056 finished in 2nd place after qualification matches in the Archimedes division with a record of 8 and 1 and only slightly behind the first place team by a few tie breaking points. We went on to pick our alliance of team 1114 from Governor Simcoe of St Catharines and team 4334 from Calgary Alberta – a rookie team and a small wide robot excellent for triple balancing. We became known as the Canadian Alliance or the “Eh” team
We went on to win the quarter finals and semi finals two games straight and then found ourselves playing the number one alliance which contained two of the best robots to play Rebound Rumble (67 and 2826) We lost the first match 106 to 103 but came back to win the next two matches 115 to 97 and 94 to 72 with 2 of 3 successful triple balances. These three matches were spectacular. The win gave team 2056 it’s second Championship Division Win and a birth to the Einstein field to play off against the other three divisional champions.
On Einstein with over 10 thousand people in the stands and many more watching online, we met up against the Curie division winners. Unfortunately the Einstein field was riddled with communication problems and the Canadian Alliance had all three robots lose communication at some point during each of the matches played. They did replay the first match but the problems continued, effectively shutting the Canadian alliance down, we lost both matches. The very effective triple balance could not be utilized.
Team 2056 received its third Championship Technical award in as many years. Receiving the Motorola Quality award recognizes our robot as it stands out amongst the 400 teams present, thanks to the tireless and painstaking work of Tyler Holtzman.
The students persevered even when it got tough, and even when it was totally out of their control. We look forward to another chance to showcase the “General Lee” at the Indiana Robotics Invitational in July and getting together with our friends and sponsors on May 23rd at the Grand Olympia for our annual Celebration Dinner.