Spartronics 4915 successfully dove into REEFSCAPE at our first competition of the season at Sammamish High School in Bellevue, Washington. Keep up to date on all the action on social media, and consider supporting us by visiting our website!

Spartronics, led by drive team coach Emily Ramos and drive team members Evan Kuykendall, Joyce Michalczuk, Audrey Benson, Cascade Kaseler and Sam Wachter, powered EPHYRA to a 6-3 match record on Day 1. We currently stand in the top 10. A highlight included teaming up with perennial contender Jack In the Bot 2910 for an event high 170 points in Qualification Match 40!

The team’s approach of designing EPHYRA around a winning REEFSCAPE game strategy has proven fruitful. In this first competition, EPHYRA is focused on quickly acquiring and scoring coral pieces on the metal “reef”. EPHYRA’s three stage elevator can reach any level of the reef, and combined with our innovative auto system, in either autonomous or teleop mode we can score on any branch, in any station, in any order. Read all about EPHYRA here, and our amazing Auto System here!

We were grateful to partner up with many awesome FRC teams on Day 1, working together as an alliance to earn valuable ranking points to hopefully qualify us for the playoff round on Day 2.

We’ve learned to expect the unexpected, and this year is no different. A chain problem in match 2 slowed us down, but we quickly recovered. We’re learning to adapt to algae balls rolling around all over the field, as well as countering tough defense from opposing alliances. We will continue to compete and learn!

What happens on the field is only part of the story. The team applied for the prestigious FIRST Impact Award, based on our commitment to grow FIRST Robotics, and STEAM all across the Island. Our Impact Award presenters represented the team well in their interviews with judges. Our brand new pit – funded with the help of our awesome sponsors – features displays sharing our work in innovative engineering. Finally, our Dean’s List nominees Emily and Ethan had successful interviews with judges about their commitment in the classroom and to FIRST.

The day’s matches ended around 8:00 last night, but our day was not done. The team held an intense and productive scouting meeting back at the team hotel. The purpose of this meeting is to review the day, and discuss our fellow teams and robots as we prepare for the all-important alliance selection on Day 2. Team member Finn Harrigan has done an outstanding job of preparing the team for scouting this year. He wrote an end-to-end scouting solution called Orpheus. Orpheus collects detailed match data from our team of dedicated scouters. It provides insights, notes, visualizations, links to robot photos and match replays. It helped the team to lock into who might be promising alliance partners. 

After a few hours of sleep, the team is ready to keep diving on Day 2!