FTC Washington 2012/13
Washington State has over 80 teams this year, and wanted to try a new format. They created a league system so that all teams got to play more robot matches.
Every team was assigned to a league. The league would play three rounds of 6 matches. Most leagues would have one or two weeks between their rounds so that teams could work on their robot. Three leagues would merge into one district, with the top teams going onto the State Championship.
 Central League
The FIX IT team was part of the central league which was for teams that were too far apart for frequent meetings. We met once in central Washington to play the first two rounds. Our robot, George, did well in the central league matches. In the first two matches, he was able to score on the lower and middle pegs, and had a ramp that our partner could climb in the end game. His autonomous program worked 100% of the time. George was the first robot to score during autonomous and the first to score the IR bonus. During the driver controlled time, he was the first to score a row bonus. Best of all, we had no major repairs during the 12 matches. The Central League held their third round the afternoon before the District Qualifier. |
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George didn't have any of the intermittent power problems that happened at home. The additional supports may have stabilized the electrical wires. With our partners, we won 5 out of 6 matches.
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North District
As expected, District matches were much tougher. Other teams blocked our autonomous program in most rounds. Overall it was just tougher to score against the more experienced teams. With only three team members, we did some basic scouting which helped us for match play. We won our qualifying matches and ended up in 6th place after the qualifying rounds!
When two of the alliance captains choose other captains, suddenly, we became an alliance captain. At this point, we realized that our match scouting really wasn't enough information to be an alliance captain. As the fourth ranked alliance, we were playing against the first ranked alliance. They won the first two matches and our alliance was out. But it was fun being an Alliance Captain, even if we only lasted for two matches. Our team was surprised and delighted when we won the Inspire award for the North District! |
George scored lots of rings during matches. He could reach the top row and usually scored two rings at a time, except for when we only placed one ring on a peg to quickly place the other ring on a different peg to get more row bonuses. One of our partners drove up our ramp and we scored the lift points! 
Washington State Championship
One of the best parts of the day was seeing friends on other teams who weren't in our district. Of course, we liked getting to check out their robots too.
FIX IT was in one of the highest scoring rounds (300 points). Unfortunately, it was our only good round. George had connection issues, and a variety of unexpected challenges. The best teams have good scouting, can block simple autonomous programs, and have defensive strategies making it harder for us to score.
By the end of the day, we were at bottom in the robot rankings. It just wasn't a good day for George.
Fortunately, Washington State Championships are fun even when your robot isn't winning!
