Team Charger Has Successful Rookie Season in FTC Competition

At Heritage Christian Academy we recently completed their first season competing in the FTC division of FIRST Robotics.  Our season began in September when the 2015-16 FTC game, iResQ, was announced nationally.  With that announcement, our team of 12 students in grades7-12 and 7 adult mentors began meeting weekly (and soon multiple times each week) to begin the process of designing and building our robot to compete in a qualifying tournament in early 2016.  Multiple prototypes were designed, tested, and ultimately discarded before settling on our final design in early December.  We spent the remaining weeks testing and refining this design before heading to our January 30th competition.

On January 30th we arrived early in the morning at UMKC with 44 other teams from Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.  In the morning we had our robot inspected for compliance to rules, met with FTC judges, and collaborated with other teams with whom we would be allied in actual competition.  Shortly after noon, the qualifying matches began.  At the conclusion of those matches, the top four teams in each of two divisions were allowed to invite other teams to be in their alliance for the elimination rounds.  Team Charger was excited to be one of those teams selected, largely because we had demonstrated that we were one of 4-5 teams in the entire competition capable of securing the maximum number of points by handing our robot from the "mountain."

Unfortunately, our final alliance was eliminated from the competition, but the students left with their appetites whetted and ready to tackle a new challenge next year.