After our successful tournament in Wolfe City, we were excited to go to Galveston, TX for the Battle by the Beach Signature Event. Especially now that we had a functional end game mech to try out.
This was a great opportunity for us to improve because several top teams were going to be there. Our basic goal for the weekend was to be better a team when we finished the tournament than we were when we started.
Day 1: Getting Off to a Solid Start
We started off qualifying with two solid and convincing wins which felt really good. What was even better, in our second match we got to ally with our good friends and super fun team 4148E Three Headed Goat… and we got a win point with them! So right out of the gate we were 2-0 with a win point.
But not everything was sunshine and lollipops. Next up was a tough match against 4154X U.S.S.R. They made it to the finals at Worlds last year so we figured this would be one of those matches we would learn from.
We got off to a good start and felt like we were in a good position to win the match. But with about a minute left our end game mech fell off so we had to put our bot in the corner for the rest of the match.
4154X is a great team – but with all due respect we felt like we might have been able to win this one if we had stayed in it until the end. It was still a match we learned from though. That match forced us to figure out how to keep our end game in place until the end of the match. We didn’t have that problem again for the rest of the tournament.
Day 2: Trying to Make the Elimination Round
We had another tough match to start of Day 2 which dropped us to 2-2 for the tournament. We weren’t super happy about our record at that point. But with the way the rest of the schedule worked out, we figured we were in a good spot to get to at least 4-4 or maybe 5-3. With the auton win point we earned in Day 1, that should have been enough for us to get to play in the alliance rounds.
After a couple more wins pushed us to 4-2 we got to play a match against our friends 839Z Caution Tape. This felt like an important match because they were 4-2 as well. Whoever won would definitely have an advantage in the rankings.
In auton we were able to get another win point and we got off to a great start in the driver portion. But about halfway into the match Caution Tape got disabled so it turned into a 2 on 1. It ended up being an easy 138-36 win for us. But it was a little disappointing because we wish we could’ve played Caution Tape at full strength. Hopefully we’ll get that opportunity later in the season.
From there, we managed to win our last match and finished qualifying with a 6-2 record and 2 auton win points. That’s was good enough for the 6th seed in alliance selection and a sure spot in the elimination bracket. That was so much more that we expected going in.
Making a Run at the Finals
For the bracket round, we teamed up with 3303S Dublin Spitzer Robotics. That turned out to be a good alliance and we easily won in the Round of 16.
In the quarterfinals we ran into 77787B World Controller and 8000C HRS Robohawks. Our alliance put up a great fight but 3303S had some trouble with their flywheel in this match and that was just too much for us to overcome. We ended up losing 194-119.
Naturally, World Controller and Robohawks went on to win the whole tournament. That’s two times in a row that we’ve lost to the alliance that eventually ended up winning. There’s probably a moral victory in that or something. Lol
Overall we were really happy with how our robot performed last weekend.
And, we won the Excellence Award! Sounds like we’ll be seeing you all again in Dallas next year. We can’t wait!!
