Having participated in the Palmetto Regional a few weeks before, our team came into this regional with a good idea of what we needed to do to perform well. Thursday went well and we were able to get autonomous working. We were also able to get in a lot of practice with the improved mechanisms that we had been working on during the weeks in between the competitions.

On Friday, we started off well and created multiple stacks, but did not have many of them capped with recycling containers, which caused our ranking to be low. As the morning progressed, our average score increased and we were slowly climbing up in the rankings. In our sixth match, we got the highest score of the regional, moving us from 39th place to 8th. After seven matches, we ended the day in 8th place.

The following day, we had another high scoring match and finished up qualifications in 8th place. We were the first pick for the first ranked team, Team 1225, The Gorillas. By the end of alliance selections, we had an all North Carolina alliance, with Team 900, The Zebracorns, as the third robot on our alliance.

We soared through qualifications as we scored over 100 points in both of our matches and advanced to the semi finals in first place. During the semi finals, one of our alliance partners’ robot was not working properly and we were close to getting knocked out. However, we took our one time out to get their robot fixed, and in the third match, we scored the highest score of the elimination rounds, which advanced us to the finals. In the first finals match, we outscored the other by three points, giving us a 1-0 lead for the win. In the second finals match, we had a rough start having the first couple of stacks getting knocked over and the other stacking robot having pneumatic issues. At the end of the match, we came out as the winners with a score of 72-65.

After the final matches, we were awarded with not only the win, but also the Industrial Safety Award and the Engineering Inspiration Award. We are having a great season and are looking forward to competing at the FRC World Championships in St. Louis!

Thank you to all of our sponsors, volunteers, and fellow teams who have all made this possible!