The MTHS robotics team, 1778 Chill Out, traveled to Mount Vernon High School to compete in the regional FIRST robotics competition (FRC) on March 19. FRC creates a new competition arrangement every year, where each team only has a total of 6 weeks to design and create a robot. Each year the robot must be prepared for a specific objective such as completing challenges or tasks to earn points.
Senior and Chill Out member Nat Sutton said the team felt confident before going into the competition.
“We felt pretty good because we got to test run our robot many times before,” Sutton said.
Chill Out was ranked sixth overall, so they became captains. Because they were captains, they got to pick two other teams to compete with them. They chose team 2910, Jack in the Bot, from Jackson High School and team 2903, Neobots, from Arlington High School to compete with them.
The drive team for MTHS consisted of juniors Bradley Knorr, Teddy Kifelew, Mark Takatsuka, and seniors Matt Trahms and Mira Shin. In the quarter finals they came out on top with two wins and one loss.
Unfortunately in the semi-finals they lost the first match and couldn’t come out on top for the second match, finishing with a score of 335 to 311.
The matches included all three robots competing with each other against another alliance within an allotted amount of time. The robots had tasks of collecting and throwing wiffle balls, grabbing gears and giving them to the people on the ships, and at the very end climbing a rope, all with objective of scoring the most points.
But that’s not the end for the Mountlake Terrace robotics team; their next competition was March 25-26 at Glacier Peak High School from 11-5 p.m. each day.
At Glacier Peak High School, the MTHS robotics team 1778 Chill Out competed in another FIRST robotics competition (FRC) and ended up being a finalist. This time coming out of qualifications team 1778 was ranked fourth overall, compared to being ranked sixth last time.
The team became captains once again, meaning they were able to pick two other schools to be aligned with. They chose team Pronto (3070) from Shorecrest High School and team 1294 Topgun from Eastlake High School to compete with them.
Going into the quarterfinals, team 1778 and their allies went up against the blue alliance and came out on top with a score of 345-305 for the first match, and won the second time with a score of 445-135. 445 was the top score in the PNW district quarterfinals, according to announcer Bryan Andrews.
Since they came out on top in the quarterfinals, the MTHS robotics team moved on to the semi finals. In the semifinals they lost the first match, but proved themselves by winning the next two matches. In the semi finals team 1778 and their allies scored an astounding 465 points, which is the highest score that had ever been scored in the PNW district, moving them into the finals.
In the finals, Chill Out’s alliance ended up losing both rounds.
Senior Mira Shin, member of the 1778 drive team, said she felt “incredible” about how they did in the competition and “didn’t expect to do this well.”
But that was not all for team 1778. During the awards ceremony they received the creativity award, which is awarded to team that show creativity in design, use of components or strategy in play.
Their next robotics competition took place on April 5th-8th at the PNW district championship in Cheney, Wash. Chill Out was awarded the Innovation in Control award for demonstrating excellent engineering design. Overall the team ranked seventh out of 155 competing teams in the PNW district championship.
As a result, the MTHS robotics team will advance to the FIRST Robotics World Championship for the first time in five years, which will take place in Houston, Texas from April 19-22.
