Royal Oak Robotics Team Wins District Competition

The following article was reported and written by Chris Pariseau.

This past weekend, Royal Oak sent two Robotic teams to the FIRST Howell Division Competition. 

This year’s game is Aerial Ascent. The object is to have an alliance of three teams to have their robots to work together to pass a large ball from one end of the field to the other and try to prevent the opposing alliance from doing the same. There are different scoring objectives and the more each alliance works together to get the ball across the field, the more opportunity for higher scoring values.  Alliances are assigned randomly and each teams participates in twelve qualifying matches. 

Team 1188 Oaktown Crewz and Team 3548 Robo Ravens sent a combined total of 15 students to Howell this weekend. Team Coaches are Chris Mounts for 1188 and Marc Center for 3548.  Both coaches work together with the students for six weeks daily designing, building, testing and problem solving for six weeks prior to competition. 

Former 1188 member and now mentor, Nathan Shaeff, provides support, encouragement and past experience to the team members.  As a recent graduate of Kettering, he also provides guidance and advice to the students considering majoring in engineering when they graduate. 

Many parents have also provided volunteer hours assisting the team, feeding them, and providing additional build-support. Both teams competed in every match assigned.  Both drive teams showed their skills on the field.  Forty teams competed and only 24 advance to the quarterfinals.  Team 3548 was chosen to join the #1 alliance Team 67 HOT (Heroes of Tomorrow) from Huron Valley Schools and Team 469 Los Guerrrillas from Bloomfield Hills.  These three teams dominated and quickly won best two out of three in the quarterfinals, semi-finals and finals. 

Royal Oak High School is very proud of the students, their coaches, mentors and parents.  They truly represent the variety of talent in Royal Oak and continue the tradition of representing the high caliber of our high school. 

Some quick FIRST facts

• In 1992, only 28 teams competed in FIRST tournaments. 
• This year, over 2700 teams worldwide will compete. 
• In Michigan, 277 teams will compete...that is one out of ten. 

For more information regarding FIRST in Michigan, please check out http://www.firstinmichigan.org/index.html.  For more information regarding ROHS’ robotics teams: https://www.facebook.com/1188OaktownCrewz  

Next up is the State Competition April 10-12 at Eastern Michigan University.