The Bomb Squad, Mountain Home High School robotics team, competed last week at the Orlando Regional at the University of Central Florida. The event consisted of 59 total teams from four countries and four states.
Faculty sponsor Jackie Basinger says, “This was by far one of the biggest comebacks the team has made in our 26 years of competing in robotics.”
During the team’s first practice round, they had a very unfortunate malfunction with their climber. The climber bent and bound up to almost an unrepairable state. It took a lot of time, but the team members were able to recover and have a fully-functioning climber. However, it wasn’t until after the second qualification match.
Basinger says, unfortunately the Bomb Squad lost its first qualification match putting the team at the bottom of the rankings. They were able to quickly recover, and Raptor, the team’s robot, was able to showcase all of its designed features. During match 67, the Mountain Home team’s alliance was able to set the high score of 104 points. The team ended the qualification round with a record of 7-2 and ranked fourth.
During alliance selection, Mountain Home was chosen by the third-ranked team, 4481 Team Rembrandts from the Netherlands, and was also joined by team 1884 The Griffins from the United Kingdom.
Basinger says, “Our international alliance went into the elimination tournament with a fierce determination as the second-seeded alliance.”
In the quarter finals, Mountain Home beat that high score of 104 and scored a total of 117 points. Then the semifinals occurred, with Mountain Home playing against the fourth-seeded alliance consisting of “our dear friends Breakaway from Searcy.” The round went to 3-of- 3, with Breakaway’s alliance coming out on top. Mountain Home had some malfunctions during those matches prohibiting Raptor’s intake from bringing in cargo and being able to drive properly.
The Bomb Squad will be competing April 1-2 at Harding University for the Arkansas Regional event.
You can follow the Bomb Squad in its efforts to grab a world championship invitation on its social media: FRC Team 16.
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