Send the RoboHounds to the World Championship

For the first time since 2019, Team 4500, the Robohounds, have qualified for the FIRST Robotics Competition World Championship!! The competition will take place April 16-19 in Houston, Texas.

What is FIRST?

FIRST is an organization with the goal of inspiring young students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and preparing them for the future. Their core value is cooperation, and through teamwork, they hope to inspire students to better the world. You can read more about them HERE . There are three levels of competition within FIRST. FRC is the highest level of competition usually meant for high school students. This year’s game is Reefscape where robots compete to score algae in the barge or processor, score coral on the reef, and finish by climbing. If you are curious for more details the game reveal video is HERE .

Who are the RoboHounds?

We are a school team from Clayton High School in Clayton, Missouri. Our team is currently 134th of 3700 teams worldwide.

Our Robot is named Gyrados (like the pokemon). Robot reveal video

Our socials are: Youtube: @frcteam4500team4500

Instagram: @team4500

This year we competed in 2 regional competitions. The first was in Arkansas where we placed 6th overall. Within that regional we won the Creativity Award: “Celebrates creativity that enhances strategy of play and was intentionally designed and not discovered.” Our second regional competition was in Saint Louis where we placed 3rd. STL was a crushing defeat since our team was ranked 1st until the end of qualification matches. Of the 15 matches we competed in that weekend, we only lost two matches in the finals (of the whole competition), ranking us as the second alliance. We also won the Innovation in Control Award: “Celebrates an innovative control system or application of control components – electrical, mechanical or software – to provide unique machine functions.”. If we didn’t win the competition, how did we qualify? FIRST created a “wildcard” system where top-ranking teams earn points based on their placement in regionals and the number of awards won. The top teams in the Wildcard roster are selected each week and qualify for worlds. Our team qualified on March 26. Our next competition would be Worlds, but first, we need to raise ~9k to send our team to Huston.

Any donations would be greatly appreciated!