This weekend, AIM Robotics went to the NYC Super Qualifiers. The day started with an early wake-up at 6:00 am, before we went to the GAGA Center to pick up our supplies. After we had loaded all of our supplies into the car, we drove down to John Dewey.
Once arriving, we got set up, and immediately started scouting the teams around us, and getting in practice runs. After we had gotten down our information about the teams, and passed the robot inspection, we then proceeded to the interview. There were lots of nerves before the interview.
One member of the team, Amelia, described her feelings before the interview, “I was very stressed. My script was ingrained in my mind, reading through it over and over again. However, once I started speaking my nerves faded and I felt in the moment.” Overall, the interview went well.
After finishing the interview, the next step was to see how our robot would perform for real. During our first match, we started off slow, with our robot missing both the cones during the autonomous, only being able to park. Despite this, we were able to pull back and ended up winning the match with a score of 74. The next four games went by, and at the end, we were sitting comfortably in third. This meant that we were able to be an alliance captain. Thanks to our scouting team, we were able to come up with the best possible strategy. We ended up partnering with the two teams we were AIM-ing to be with, team 17126, Natural selection, and team 8088, Cephalopods. During the first semifinal match, we came out strong, winning 111-94. The second match went even better. Everything worked perfectly, from our autonomous to our game plan, and we ended up winning 129-112, meaning we would be moving on to the finals.
During the first match, tensions were high. We were going against the top team, 310, Stuy Fission. They had been performing strongly, beating a score of 200 in one of their previous matches. The first match started strongly for both sides, but Stuy started pulling away once they had gotten a circuit. Unfortunately, the match was lost by a score of 200-121, but we knew it wasn't over. We would need a strong performance to come back, but we had spent the entire season preparing for this, and we were not going to go down easily.
After the match finished, we regrouped and refocused. We came into the second match with newfound confidence, and it paid off, as we were able to win the game 157-136. This meant that it would all come down to one final match. The autonomous was strong, scoring thirty points from just our robot alone. Our opponents were not letting us walk over them though, fighting back and making a circuit. With ten seconds left, we grabbed the cap and were able to cover the junction cutting off their circuit. When the whistle sounded it was too close to tell who had won.
Gideon, head of the scouting department recalls the events by saying “I was so nervous, the minute that we were waiting felt like an hour.”
When they finally were ready to announce the winner, everybody waited anxiously in anticipation. As the screen turned blue, everybody around us erupted in joy and excitement. The joy didn’t end there though. As they announced the winners of the awards, we were also the winners of the Inspire award. This means we will now be moving into the Finals, so be sure to find us there!