Thunderbots to Houston

We are a group of parents and students seeking donations for our FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics team, The Spectrum Thunderbots. We recently qualified for an international competition in Houston, Texas in April.

 

You can watch our journey in this video:

 

Each year FIRST holds many international events that give students opportunities to come together, learn new skills, and compete at various levels. Our level (First Robotics Competition - FRC) involves a very short season - game details are released in January, and teams have just six weeks to design and build a functional robot.

Our team consists of  11 students from grades 9-12, nine of them in their first year of Robotics competition. They worked hard on a design they thought would be competitive. Despite their best efforts they arrived at the FIRST Canadian Pacific Regionals with a half-finished robot called Herbie. They worked for many hours on the first day of the competition but still missed every practice match. Qualification matches were next, and they began to be penalized because their robot wasn't able to take the field. With spirits down and fighting back tears, it was time to make a decision: keep moving forward with their original design, or rip it all apart and become a defense bot.

 

The Thunderbots came together as a team, and decided Herbie would become Flatty Patty, and defend. Patty zipped around the field preventing other teams from scoring, and never missed another match. Because of this solid defense, the top team in the competition chose the Thunderbots for their alliance for the playoffs -and they went on to win the entire Regional Championship! This victory comes with a potential opportunity to attend the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas on April 20-23, 2022.

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