US FTC Robotics Team Headed to State Tournament

Both the rookie and veteran FTC (terrestrial) Robotics teams put on a thrilling show last Saturday at the Chicago League Qualifier Parker hosted. In the seeding rounds, each team played six matches aligned with one of the 21 total teams against a pair of other teams. Sometimes a team you play against in one match will be the team you are aligned with in another. At the end of these seeding rounds, Parker's veteran team, #3507 Robotheosis, remained undefeated in 1st place while the rookie team, #9410 Frank's Garage, was the 4th seed going into the playoff rounds, partly due to the loss in the second match when both Parker teams played against each other.

In their semifinal round, Robotheosis’ alliance roundly won their two matches to head into the finals. The alliance led by Frank's Garage lost the first of their best-of-three matches in the semifinal round against the alliance led by the RoboGrizzlies from Walter Payton HS. However, the Parker rookies bounced back to win the second game to force a tie breaker.

Unfortunately, their robot suffered technical issues and was not able to play in the third match, so it was left to the two other teams in their alliance. It came down to a nail biter with the Parker alliance coming up short in the final moments of the match.

So it was up to the alliance led by Parker’s Robotheosis team to avenge the loss in the finals against the Payton alliance. The RoboGrizzlies won the first of three games, which was the first time the Parker veterans had suffered a loss all season. The Parker alliance came back strong in the second game and won resoundingly to force the final deciding match—another nail biter with the lead changing multiple times. In the final moments of the match, Parker was able to launch their paper airplane drone from their robot to score the points that gave their alliance a 97 to 94 win and secure the championship!

During the awards ceremony, Frank's Garage was recognized as the runner-up for the Design Award while Robotheosis again won the Control Award for its autonomous programming that allowed the team to dominate the Chicago league this year. Robotheosis also came in 2nd place for the most coveted FTC award, the Inspire Award, doubly qualifying the team to go to the State Tournament at Elgin Community College on March 1 and 2.

Lucia Almeida ’27

Jack Bartlett ’27

Sam Goldblatt ’27

Dev Weiss ’27

 

Jack Adee ’25

Victoria Batts ’25

Ellis Brown ’25

Daniel Chang ’26

Alex Chaouki ’25

Lincoln Hamid ’25

Grant Koh ’24

Spencer Koh ’26

Nash Oliphant ’26

Shade Rothkopf ’25

Max Satterfield ’26

Lionel Schulman ’26

Judah Solomon ’25

Eli Terman ’25

Warner Vance ’24

Chase Wayland ’26

Huge shout-out to all the folks in maintenance, security, custodial, tech and admin, as well as the faculty and parents/guardians who helped to make this event a huge success.

Go Robotic Colonels!

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