Grand Rapids Christian High School Eaglebot teams competed in their first tournament of the 23-24 campaign this past Saturday. Six GRCHS teams joined 26 other teams from the area in the new Grandville Robotics Competition Center for game play and skills competition.
The morning to early afternoon match play session had all 34 teams play a randomly assigned set of six matches to determine their rankings for the afternoon single-elimination tournament. Match play consisted of two minutes battles with four teams assigned as two alliances (blue or red), to battle in a short (0:15) autonomous programmed play and then 1:45 driver-controlled play. Eaglebot teams battled well and showed strong character and commitment:
Team 63600A - August
Team 63600B - TESS
Team 63600C - January
Team 63600D V.E.W.T.S
Team 63600E - Mercy
Team 63600F - FredTheFrog
In-between matches, when not team interviewing with the tournament judges, all teams could participate in a separate Skill competition where each team individually uses their robot to score as many points on the competition field as they can for both autonomous programmed and driver-controlled sessions. Each team can do three runs of each kind of session and combine their best score from each as an overall Skills score. Skills rankings are used as an awarded category and a basis for many other awards beyond tournament champion. Our teams all participated in Skill competition and one team exceeded our early season goal of 115 combined points (autonomous + driver-controlled) with Team 63600C – January earning 120 points (Driver:70, Autonomous:50). The score put Team 63600C with the 27th best Skills score this season in the state of Michigan. The top Skills score in Michigan as of the end of October is 326 and the highest in the Halloween Tournament was 246, which is 5th best in the state of Michigan, by the Grandville HS team 248D – Robodawgs: Differential.
After match play, teams were ranked based on their morning success and then starting with ranked team one, each team chose another team to form an alliance for the single-elimination tournament to determine the Halloween Tournament champion through field play. The GRCHS Eaglebots has close matches, but none were able to make it past the first round in the single-elimination tournament.
Several awards were given at the tournament and GRCHS Team 63600C – January was awarded the Judges Award for their outstanding work in CAD design, notebook, interview, and demonstrated teamwork. The award presenter acknowledged that many teams had impressive notebooks and interviews, which makes this Judges Award even that much more special that it was earned by one of our GRCHS teams.
Our next scheduled potential tournament is the Holiday Tournament on December 2 again at Grandville Robotics Center and we are awaiting confirmation on our acceptance into this tournament. Follow our Instagram feed (https://www.instagram.com/grcs_vex/ ) for many pictures and videos from the tournament.