2015 FTC South Super-Regionals
The 2015 FTC South Super-Regionals were held March 11-13 in San Antonio at the Henry B. Gonzalez Center.
Orignally the Teams advancing to Super-Regional from Georgia were:
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4076 - RoBUGs
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4100 - Darbots
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5120 - Latrodectus Mactans
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5875 - GENIUS
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6047 - Twisted Axles
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6278 - Gladiators
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7361 - Ctrl-Alt-Delete
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7373 - Eagle Robotics
However, Ctrl-Alt-Delete couldn't make the trip so we were asked, as the alternate, to go in their place to represent Georgia. The Super-Regionals had 74 teams from 13 Southern states participating. FTC teams in the United States advance from state or regional-level Championship Tournaments to one of four Super-Regional Championship Tournaments before advancing to the FTC World Championship.
The South Super-Regional had two divisions (of 36 teams each) and four game fields operating side-by-side throughout the qualifying matches. Rockin' Robots was in the Ochoa Division, for the second year, for the robot matches. Each division went through the qualification matches, alliance selection, and elimination matches separately to determine a division winner alliance and a division finalist alliance. The two division winners then competed to produce an event champion and an event finalist.
The event followed the rules as outlined in the Game Manual Part 1. Twenty-Five teams advanced from the Super-Regional to the World Championship. Teams winning any of the 9 judged awards advanced (Inspire 1st/2nd/3rd, Think, Connect, Innovate, Design, Motivate, Control), as well as the six teams that were division finalists (event champion alliance, event finalist alliance). After the advancing alliance teams and those that won judged awards the remaining slots were alloted to the highest ranking teams from alternating divisions all slots were filled.
Our first day in Qualifying matches we were 3 for 4 with 1261 Ranking Points which placed us 11th in the Ochoa Division. Our highest points on the first day was 547 for our Alliance. We went on to win 4 out of 4 on the second day of Qualifying matches. The Rockin' Robots - 5940 finished the Qualifying Rounds in Ochoa Division with 7 wins out of 8 matches placing us 6th in ranking overall for the division.
During the Alliance Partner selection process we were tapped to Captain the 4th Alliance because several teams were selected to partner in the 1st and 2nd place alliances. Darbots were selected to be on the 1st place Alliance by Monkey Madness and we played against them in the initial rounds of the Semi-Finals.
For our Alliance we partnered with Aperture Science - 5064 from Elon, NC and MoHawk Elites - 8790 from Houston, TX. We lost the Semi-Final round 2-0 against Monkey Madness - 5096 (former FTC World Champions), Eagle Robotics Experience - 5257 (current FTC World Champions), and DarBots - 4100. Our scores were close each round but just not good enough to beat the combination of skill and experience brought into play by the 1st place Alliance team.
Our story doesn't end there though. After having a tough day at the Georgia State FTC Championship and being an alternate to the Super-Regionals we were fortunate enough to be able to go. After winning 7 out of 8 matches in Ochoa division and then loosing 2-0 in the Semi-Finals to the 1st place Alliance we were expecting to end our season with a great run at Super-Regionals. However, the process of selecting teams to go on to Worlds involves both Awards won and field performance. Our field performance and ranking points placed us 19th overall at the FTC South Super-Regionals and that was high enough to earn us a place at the 2015 FTC World Championship to be held at the end of April in St. Louis!
