TA News

Guest post from TA’s robotics coach Leif LaWhite

TA’s robotics team 4886, traveled to Fryeburg, ME on Saturday for their first competition of the 23-24 season – and they brought home the aluminum.  

TA sent four robots to the tourney:

• 4886S: Aden Perry, Connor Kutter-Walker, and Duncan MacPhee, 
• 4886Y: Rowan Moody-A’Ness, Aiden Ouelette, Lucca Huling (and Tristan Woodward in absentia), 
• 4886W: rookies Jesse Martin, Kai Slayton, (and Tanner Hardy in absentia) 
• and our middle-school team 4886X: Jay Hill, Stone Riegler, Meredith Sloop, and Connor Abraham

The tournament began with 54 two-minute 2 vs. 2 bouts. Partners and opponents for these qualification matches were randomly assigned – and each TA robot competed in eight of them. Yes, there were malfunctions and moments of panic during these bouts, but at the end of them, our rookies 4886W were the highest ranked robot in the entire field with an 8-0-0 record.  At 6-2-0, 4886S was the #3 seed while 4886Y, also 6-2-0, seeded 5th. TA’s middle school team 4886X were in 12th at 4-4-0.

For the elimination series, W had first pick – and chose brothers S as their partner. X and Y also made the elimination rounds, pairing with partners from other schools, but they lost in the quarter- and semifinals respectively. But after 3 more wins, the 4886W and 4886S alliance won the contest handily, bringing home a trophy each. I think that this is the first time we’ve ever had a rookie team go completely undefeated and win their first-ever competition.  

Meanwhile S had also entered the robot skills contest – and won it too, besting all others by 2 to 1 margin and bringing home a 3rd trophy.   

We left TA at 5:45AM and got back around 6:45PM.  But I don’t think that anyone was snoozing on the drive home; I think all were thinking about how to improve their robots for our next meet: Dec 9, in Plymouth, NH.