The season for the Byting Irish is finally over, and what a season it was! Thank you to the parents whose constant support has made this team possible and a wonderful experience for us students to enjoy. Thank you to all of the mentors who have poured their time and energy to guide a bunch of high school teenagers through a robotics season and give their best efforts into our personal and collective growth. Thank you to Mrs. Defelice for leading this team, giving all that you have for us students, helping to celebrate our victories and stand up from our losses, and being a role model of dedication and perseverance that every member of our team can look up to. Because we are blessed parents and mentors, we are privileged to consider States and Worlds feasible and tangible goals. With that all being said, let’s look over Alliance Selection and Playoffs at the Robotics World Championship.
FIRST Robotics Competition Championship – Day 4 (Saturday)
Alliance Selection is the process where the top eight ranked teams in Qualifications become Alliance Captains and get to pick alliance members to join their alliance in the Playoffs. At the World Championship, there are four teams on an alliance (any three can choose to play) and eight alliances, meaning 32 of 75 teams participate. This means that Playoffs is not easy to make it into as a team. The Byting Irish were ranked 39th of 74 teams, so it may look impossible for us to be picked since we are outside of the top 32, but ranking alone does not mean much. Rather, individual team performance is looked at by other team’s scouts to see how specific capabilities of our robot may be useful in an alliance. This said, the Byting Irish were selected by the 4th alliance as their third pick, an exciting time for us since before this season, we had never been selected at even the State level, let alone at the World Championship. This can be seen on this video, the Curie 2024 Alliance Selection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGrzY0CsN3w&ab_channel=FRCVideoArchive
Our Alliance Captain, 9752 ITKAN Robotics Jr., are based in Plano, Texas and ranked very highly in their Plano and Fort Worth District Events. Ranked 19th in the state of Texas after their State Championship, 9752 qualified for Worlds and had a great record of 11 wins to 4 losses.
The first pick of our alliance, 6672 Fusion Corps come from Irving, Texas and were finalists at the Fort Worth District Event and won the Dallas District Event. Finishing as a finalist at the Texas State Championship, Fusion Corps ranked 6th in Texas and proceeded to achieve a record of 11 wins to 4 losses. They were a spirited and competitive team and a great alliance partner to work with!
The second pick of our alliance, 624 CRyptionite are in Katy, Texas and ranked 2nd in the State of Texas. CRyptionite were finalists in their first District Event and the winner in their second District Event, as well as winning the Texas State Championship (Texas has 239 teams in 2024). They had a record in the Curie division of 10 wins to 5 losses.
Being part of the 4th alliance, we made it to the Curie finals and played against the 8th Alliance for the Curie blue banner. We lost by narrow margins but still were finalists in our division at the World Championship! The performance of our team at Worlds was incredible and our team recieved recognition from many teams, mentors, and volunteers, particularly about our strong defense. provided by our main driver Eli Moser.