3/15, the Cougars Gone Wired robotics team competed at the FIRST Colorado regional held in Denver. The event took place at the Ritchie Ice Center on the Denver University campus and hosted more than 40 teams from Colorado and the surrounding area. The competition kicked off with the qualification matches. The team played very well throughout the qualifiers, and ended with a ranking of 27. When the time for the alliance pick came, Cougars Gone wired was chosen to play on the sixth seeded alliance with teams 159, Alpine Robotics, and 1410, Team Kraken. The alliance played very well but ended up being knocked out in the second quarterfinal. Throughout the competition the team’s robot did very well, staying very consistent in its abilities to hang gears and climb the rope.
The awards ceremony held on Saturday, 3/18 recognizes the winning teams and several of the major awards are handed out. In order to qualify for the FIRST championship, a team must either be a part of the winning alliance at the regional level, or win one of 3 awards. The award include the Rookie All-Star, the Engineering Inspiration, and the Chairman’s. Cougars Gone Wired was awarded the Industrial Safety award for demonstrating excellent use of safety teaching techniques, and the Engineering Inspiration. This is the 3rd year that the team has won this award and qualified for championship.
One of the other awards that the competition presents is an individual award known as the Dean’s List Finalist award. This is a prestigious award that recognizes an individual team member for their outstanding performance and attitude through demonstration of the morals of FIRST. Each regional only recognizes 1 finalist and they are then reentered in the running to win the Dean’s List Award at the championship level. This year, Madison Rutherford, 11, the teams CEO, was chosen as the Colorado Finalist. This is a huge honor and offers many opportunities for recipients
Madison shared what it was like to win Deans List Finalist, “ I don’t really remember anything other than crying and shaking all of the judges hands and a couple of them hugging me then everyone piling on and I was thinking “oh god, don’t let the certificate get bent!”
Overall, the 2017 Colorado Regional was a huge success and now the team will start preparing for the Huston Championship on 4/19. The Championship is the biggest competition in FIRST and is an opportunity for teams from all over the world to come together and compete. The event is broken up into divisions with a bracket system determining the final competitors at the end of the competition. This year, FIRST has split the championship between two venues, one held in St. Louis, the other in Huston. The winners from the two Championships will then compete to crown a 2017 champion alliance.
It is a huge accomplishment to simply be invited and the team is hard at work to get everything ready. Make sure to wish Cougars Gone Wired good luck as they head of to compete in the 2017 FIRST Steamworks Championships!