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Robotics Captains’ Log from Worlds

by | Apr 17, 2024 | Academics, Robotics

Byting Irish Captain’s Log
WORLDS – Day 0
What are Captain’s Logs?
Captain’s Logs are a glimpse into our team’s experience of the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas. More generally, they will update the team on current progress, keep individual subteams updated with other subteams, and provide insight to the future and guidance for current season plans. But for now, this is the first of five editions of a glimpse at the World Championship! Expect to see what the crew of students did this day, how plans worked out (or didn’t) and our progress for the day, general accomplishments and unfortunate incidents, other notable moments, and some spotlights on interesting FRC teams that are wonderful to learn about!
FIRST Robotics Competition Championship – Day 0 (Monday-Tuesday)
Day 0 means that the World Championship hasn’t really started for the Byting Irish. Monday evening through Tuesday evening is just traveling by bus to Houston with team 302, the Dragons! Since there is not much to say about our performance as a team quite yet (although I’ll have plenty to share soon), here is some information about the World Championship and our bus mates!
The Byting Irish are in the Curie Division at the FRC World Championship!
 
Team 7660 is part of the First In Michigan District, which sends ~85 teams to the World Championship every year. Teams in Michigan are ranked by District Points, where the point cutoff to qualify for Worlds this year was 147 District Points. The Byting Irish did very well at our District and State competitions and obtained 268 District Points, ranking us 13th in the state out of 622 teams. Below is our official team placement taken from https://www.thebluealliance.com/team/7660/2024.
For lots of information on our team, check out The Blue Alliance!
Worlds is made up of 600 teams from across the world split up into eight divisions, Archimedes, Curie, Daly, Galileo, Hopper, Johnson, Milstein, and Newton. The winners of each division move on to the Championship, playing on the coveted Einstein fields. Team 7660 is placed in the Curie division, made up of 75 teams from around the world. There are familiar teams in our division as well, such as Team 4362 the Gems and Team 503 Frog Force, both of which were our alliance partners at our Milford and Skyline competitions. Qualification matches take place all day on Thursday and Friday, and Playoff matches (which we hopefully will be selected for) take place on Saturday. Performing well enough in our Qualification matches gives us recognition among the highest ranked teams in the Curie division that will consider selecting our team to be part of their alliance. Performing very well in Qualifications will give the team a chance to even be a 1st pick or an Alliance Captain.
Since Worlds was not an expected event this year, taking a plane for the team was not a feasible option. Instead, the team members and some of the mentors going to Houston are taking a charter with team 302, the Dragons. Below is a picture of their robot!
Referencing their Blue Alliance page (https://www.thebluealliance.com/team/302), they are currently 56th in the state of Michigan and (if it wasn’t clear) qualified for Worlds by a good margin. They are placed in the Hopper division, alongside other familiar and strong teams like Team 33 Killer Bees and Team 3175 Knight Vision. 
Thank you for making it to nearly the end of the first Captain’s Log for the Byting Irish! I hope this can continue to be an enjoyable way to keep track of our team’s participation in the World Championship as well as expand your FRC knowledge! Listed below are our team’s statistics thus far in the season to highlight the tremendous accomplishments our team has had in the 2024 season alone.
Recap of the 2024 Season for the Byting Irish
FIM Milford District Competition @Milford High School
  • Ranked 23rd of 40 teams in Qualifications
  • Were the second to last team picked in Alliance Selection (which was scary!), ending up on a strong alliance with Team 67 HOT team and Team 503 Frog Force on Alliance 2
  • Made in to the Playoff finals against Alliance 1 and managed to win, a great upset and the first District Victory for the Byting Irish of the season, and the second District Victory in our entire team history! 
FIM Ann Arbor District Competition @Skyline High School
  • Ranked 19th of 40 teams in Qualifications
  • Were the very last team picked in Alliance Selection (even more scary!), ending up on Alliance 1 with Team 67 HOT team and Team 4362 the Gems
  • Made it to the Playoff finals once again, this time against Alliance 4 (which included Skyline’s team on their home court!) and once again managed to win, collecting the second District Victory and blue banner of the season!
FIM District State Championship @SVSU
  • The team’s successes at the Milford and Ann Arbor District Competitions brought the team to the State Competition in Saginaw!
  • Despite many trials, damages, technical difficulties, and every manifestation of Murphy’s Law, team 7660 ranked 9th out of 40 teams at the State level in the APTIV division, an amazing accomplishment since ranking so high at a State level is much more difficult than at a District level (There are four divisions: APTIV, Hemlock Semiconductors, Consumers Energy, and DTE Energy)
  • Because of our ranking, we became an Alliance Captain of Alliance 7, the first time in Byting Irish History (not to mention at States). We picked two strong offensive robot teams to supplement our great defensive plays
  • Pulling of an enormous upset of Alliance 1, which included our former alliance captain Team 67 HOT team at both of our districts, the team wins the entire State division, winning the third blue banner of the season
  • Our incredible performance throughout our District competitions and the State Championship granted us more than enough District Points to qualify for the FIRST World Championship in Houston, where the team is currently headed!!!
God bless,
The Captains of 7660