Ballard High School robotics team wins regional competition

The Robotics Club at Ballard High School won big this weekend: they scored first place at the Seattle Olympic Regional FIRST Robotics competition. A couple weeks ago, we talked to the team about their basketball-shooting robot, which scored big points at the competition.

After a few months of tireless robo-building, the team won the competition by one point. The competition consisted of two phases: a 3-on-3 game in which each team shot as many hoops as possible, then balancing on a bridge with other robots to score extra points. Ballard will go on to compete at the nationals in St. Louis.

From the Viking Robotics blog:

In the first match of the final round we experienced technical difficulties and failed to balance, leading to a loss.  In the second match our alliance shot multiple baskets and successfully triple balanced for an astonishing score of 76 points, beating our opponents by 14!  There was only one match left, the final match of the entire regional, the one that would decide the winner, and we knew we would have to give it everything we had if we wanted to win. We scored 28 points from shooting baskets and then started to triple balance, while our opponents continued to sink baskets into their top hoop. When the match ended the crowd was silent as everyone waited to see the final score and then cheers erupted from the stands as it appeared on the screen. It was 68 to 67, we had won the regional by a single point! Click here to see a video of our final match.

FIRST, or, ‘For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology,’ Robotics is a national organization that was organized to, “inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.”