The Ninjineers, Heritage’s robotics team, placed second at the South Florida Regional First Robotics Competition (FRC) at University of Miami, qualifying for the World Championships in Houston later this month.
The team bested 43 of 46 teams from Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania and seven foreign countries in the April 9-12 competition, finishing only behind the team composed of Martin County’s S.P.A.M, Miami Coral Park Senior High’s RamTech and Jupiter Community High School’s MARS (Mega Awesome Robotic Systems).
“I think the competition went really well,” mechanical director and senior Veronica Perez said. “We were very consistent.” She noted that it was the first time in Ninjineers history that they won matches against both of the top two teams in Florida, S.P.A.M. and Suncoast Community High School’s Children of the Swamp, in one competition.
The regionals proceeded in three stages: practice on Thursday, qualifications on Friday and playoffs on Saturday. The Ninjineers only lost three matches; they lost once on Friday and both final matches during playoffs. The top xxx teams qualified for the World Championships.
“I’m just excited to go to Worlds to get to experience that,” safety director and senior Rosario Castaneda said. She only joined the team this year, so the upcoming championships will be her only one.
The game this season is Rebuilt, in which the robots must collect balls from the floor and from human players to fire into their alliance’s funnel. Alliances are composed of robots from three teams.
As always, the rounds proceed in three phases: first, the robots act autonomously for a short period of time (20 seconds in Rebuilt’s case); for the rest of the round, the robots are controlled by human players. Finally, as the round nears its end (the last 30 seconds for Rebuilt), players can climb a tower on their side of the playing field for extra points or continue scoring balls.
Before the event, though, they needed to prepare. The team ensured that their robot was fully functional and that they had packed everything they needed to in the “pit,” a large portable station full of parts and tools. They also made sure all members knew the roles they would take on during the competition.
The team went into the competition confident but with tempered expectations. They knew they had tough competition in the Wiredcats of Western High School, RamTech and especially S.P.A.M.
During the practice matches, the Ninjineers had a chance to assess their opponents; notably, Children of the Swamp had weakened their robot since a prior competition in Orlando, making it possible for the Ninjineers to win against them consistently on Friday.
During qualifications, the team maintained a strong win record, only losing once to an alliance including MARS. Additionally, the Ninjineers won 507 points in one of their rounds; in only one other round did the victors (S.P.A.M., RamTech and the Lightning Blue Lizards from The Columbus School in Columbia) score more than 500 points, earning the highest score of the qualifications, 513.
By the end of the day, the Ninjineers ranked third, RamTech ranked second and S.P.A.M. ranked first. In the playoffs, alliances were no longer randomized. Instead, team captains were chosen based on their ranking during qualifications. Since S.P.A.M. picked RamTech and MARS, the Ninjineers were the second team captain. They selected Dillard High School’s SigmaC@T, who ranked fourth on Friday, and Forge, a Pembroke Pines community team who ranked 48th. MARS ranked 20th in qualifications, so it’s evident ranking isn’t everything when it comes to selecting players for an alliance.
Though the playoffs were “a little bit more high stress,” Perez said, “we did really well.” They won their first two matches, which didn’t come as a surprise, but their next match was the semifinals. They were facing against S.P.A.M.’s alliance, which had won its previous matches in landslides. The Ninjineers knew they were probably going to lose.
As luck would have it, though, S.P.A.M. had an issue during the automatic phase of play. That initial disadvantage gave the Ninjineers the leg up they needed to win. The unexpected victory “left our whole team surprised and in awe,” Castaneda said.
“This [competition] is the first time we beat S.P.A.M. in a match and also Swamp in another match, which is in fact a big deal for us,” Perez said.
As a result of the loss, S.P.A.M.’s alliance was sent into the losers bracket. They once again dominated the match, giving them a second chance to face off against the Ninjineers. Since they had fixed the issues that had crippled them during the semifinals, the Ninjineers weren’t able to get ahead and lost both final matches; however, the Heritage team still scored well, and they came far enough to earn a well-deserved second place in the playoffs and a spot in the upcoming FRC World Championship.
