National final for Wilsobotics team
After nine months, our combined effort for this season was put to the final test. The Wilsobotics team visited the Copper Box Arena in Stratford for the FTC UK Championship, along with 63 other teams, all vying to win awards and trophies, and, of course, to be crowned the greatest FTC team in the country and represent the UK in the First Global Challenge in Panama.
Billed as a two-day extravaganza, the first day was a warm-up, where we played practice matches and had the all-important Judging slot, where we would present our progress with our robot this season and explain some of the challenges we faced during its construction, in the hopes of earning trophies such as the Connect trophy (for significant Outreach contributions) or the Engineering trophy (for clever design, which we won during the South-East Regionals). While some of our team was making last-minute adjustments and fixes to the robot, others were meeting and networking with the other teams at the event - firstly in friendly spirit, but also to weigh up potential partners for the Alliance selection later in the competition, in the case we made it through the qualifiers to the elimination stage.
The second day had our team members waking up extra early for what was essentially a whole day’s worth of FTC. After the opening address, we soon got into the first serious matches of the Championship. Due to issues with our sample transfer system, our first few matches weren’t our best, and we even lost one, but after fixing these issues, we won the rest of our matches by a comfortable margin, and finished the qualifiers in sixth place in our division out of 32. Soon after, the top six teams in each division picked their teams, and the elimination matches began, and after some hard fought matches, we made it to the final match of the entire season. Coincidentally, we were up against the same alliance that we played against during the Regional finals, so we were keen for a rematch! To our dismay, their skill had not diminished during these two months, and despite our best efforts, we could not secure the victory.
Even though we stumbled at the very last hurdle to glory, we are far from disheartened. In fact, the complete opposite: we feel extremely grateful as a rookie team to have earned three trophies this season, and on top of this, be placed as the second-best alliance in the entire country! Of course, this competition is not just about winning matches. We have met some amazing people and teams during this season, participated in plenty of Gracious Professionalism, and are ready to improve our robot to come back fighting next season. A big congratulations to Powercut Robotics and Norwood Industries for their win, and we wish the best of luck to Powercut in their endeavours in Panama at the International Final in November!
Article written by Adam (Year 10)
