Congratulations to the Spencerport Ranger Robotics, Team 3015, which competed as a member of the winning alliance of the Tesla division in the First Robotics world championships in St. Louis April 29 and 30.
Spencerport Ranger Robotics worked within an alliance made up of teams from Canada and Israel and the Charles Finney School in Penfield, Team 1405.
This is the fourth time in the last five years (and seven years of the team’s existence) that they have qualified and competed at the world championships. Since 2009, students have accumulated $702,000 in college scholarships.
More background
Only 600 teams from across the world qualify for this event. Spencerport’s team is made up of 72 students and three teacher mentors, as well as 20 mentors from the community and industry.
How it works
Students have six and a half weeks to design, build and test their robots. Teams start out in one of eight sub-divisions and play in qualification matches for the first two days. Then during the alliance selections, Spencerport’s team was chosen to be a part of the number one alliance with a team from Canada, a team from Israel and another Rochester team – the Charles Finney School. The alliance then played in elimination rounds where they won their division.
Last year, Spencerport also made it to the finals in their division but lost, so this year they were very excited to win the Tesla division; the farthest their team has ever made it in their history. The winners of all eight sub-divisions play each other on a field called Einstein with 43,000 people watching and cheering in the Edward Jones stadium. These are the top 32 teams in the world.
Spencerport continued to win, making it to the world finals. Each elimination round goes by the best of three matches and the finals proved to be the closest and most exciting in FRC’s 25 year history. Each alliance won a match and Spencerport’s team tied the third match 225-225. The alliance lost in a final tiebreaker because of penalty points accumulated earlier in the competition. Despite the loss, Spencerport is proud to be one of the top eight teams.
A film crew captured every moment and is working on a documentary. Major sponsors of the team include: Xerox, Harris, Baxter, United Technologies, Advantage Federal Credit Union and Spencerport Federal Credit Union.
Provided information
