Ronan robotics team advances to national contest
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RONAN — After a stellar performance Feb. 4 at the Montana FIRST Tech Challenge Championship Tournament, the Ronan School District 30 robotics team will be heading to a national robotics tournament in just two months, robotics advisor Jesse Gray said.
He couldn’t be prouder of the nine students on his team, and said he’s excited to see the kids shine at the national level.
“(Qualifying for the national tournament) is gonna be really big for the program,” he said.
Ronan’s robotics program was founded six years ago, and now several of the original team members are seeing their dreams realized.
“Their goal six years ago was to go to the national tournament,” Gray said.
Now the students have their chance to compete against at least 100 robotics teams from around the country on April 27-30 at the FIRST Championships at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Mo.
“There’s people coming from all over,” Gray said.
Now that they’ve secured a spot at the championships, the robotics team members will be focusing on fundraising for the trip to Missouri and continuing to build their engineering notebook. Ronan’s robot is quick, versatile and “really mobile,” Gray said.
“I think that’s gonna be the big difference for us,” he noted. “I think (the kids) have a really good chance.”
Ronan won the “Inspire Award” at the Feb. 4 tournament, qualifying the team to compete at the national level. The Inspire Award is a formally judged award given to the team that best embodies the challenge of the FTC program, Gray explained. Ronan’s team was chosen by the judges as having best represented a role model FIRST Tech Challenge Team, proving themselves to be a top contender for all other judging categories and a strong competitor on the field.
During the FTC competition, the SD30 robotics team competed against 25 other teams, most of them from Montana. After five qualifying rounds, Ronan held the second seed after a team from California, which had already won the Inspire Award at another championship tournament, Gray said.
Before moving into elimination matches, teams were required to form alliances; Ronan joined forces with the California team “GO-NEST” and “Dhurd Robotics” from Helena. Elimination matches are played in a seeded ladder format where the top seed goes up against the lowest seed; second best seed competes against the second lowest seed; and so on; Gray explained.
Ronan’s alliance won their first two matches to move into the finals, where they faced the third seeded alliance. In the first match, Ronan set a national high score for a championship tournament with 133 points. The second match was Ronan’s first loss of the day, putting the team in a “do or die” situation of having to win the third match to be the champions, Gray said.
But with help from the “GO-NEST” team, Ronan avoided near-disaster when the robot rolled over on its side. With only 30 seconds left in the match, the alliance partners managed to score 30 points and win the match, making them tournament champions.
