The 2011 FIRST® Season Ends
Saturday, October 28, 2011
The BR/DePuy FIRST Robotics Team, TJ2, competed in their final competition of the 2011 robot season this weekend at Memorial High School in Manchester, NH. 31 teams from Maine, NH, NY, MA, RI, CT, and VT met in Manchester met to play in the 15th River Rage Robotics Competition. Teams were dressed up in Halloween costumes that added to the fun of the day.
River Rage 2012
The team repaired and prepared their robot for the River Rage competition. Senior
Matt Hart led a group of team members through the reconstruction and design of a new launch system for the minibot. The minibot is carried by the large robot and deployed by the large robot in the last 10 seconds of the game. The students were very excited to see their new design work.
The robot, driven by
Steve Henriquez and
Agamemnon Despopolous were aided by Human Player
Trevor Kelly and Drive coach
Tom Calef. This was the first competition for this drive team, as they replaced Seniors that had graduated from the team. TJ2 went through the qualification matches with 3 wins and 2 losses. The new launch system proved itself and the students were proud of their design. TJ2 was the 2nd team picked to be an alliance partner. The alliance of team 20 from New York, team 2648 from Maine, and TJ2 was a strong one. TJ2 entered the double elimination finals with high hopes. Team 20 and 2648 were talented partners and the alliance easily made it to the semi final round. A close loss in the semifinals sent the TJ2 alliance to the losers bracket. Two more wins brought them into the final round against Tea s 1519, 78, and team 1073. TJ2 lost to this alliance and finished the River Rage competition as Finalists.
The TJ2 team brought a lot of spirit and two very talented drummers;
Jeremy Filteau and
Ian Svagdis to the event. The TJ2 drums led our team and later many other teams in spirited cheers throughout the day. Team 2468 and team 20 joined in the fun and combined their voices with those of TJ2 to create a loud and enthusiastic event where a lot of fun was had by all. TJ2 was presented with the spirit award and an award for completing the competition as finalist (2nd place out of 31 teams).
Fundraising
The team is fundraising to raise money to travel to the 2012 FIRST events in Boston , Baltimore and hopefully the Championship in St. Louis, if the team qualifies. The team is training its members in how to use the build equipment, how to CAD, creating the team uniforms, and competing in the
Savage Soccer competition held at WPI on November 12th. This competition uses the smaller VEX robotics kits to give the new members of the team a taste for what it is like to design and build a robot for competition in a short amount of time. These robots have an 8lb weight limit, much smaller than the 120 pound limit for the robot built for the FIRST Robotics Competitions.
Don't Miss this year's Dinner/Auction
The team is also readying for its major fund raiser of the year. The team is holding a Dinner/Auction at the Knights of Columbus in Bridgewater on Friday, December 2nd at 6:30pm. Tickets for the dinner and auction are $25 per person and can be purchased from Carla Souza-McGuire (
csouza@bridge-rayn.org or 508-697-6902 x 25206) by November 18th .
It will be a fun evening with a catered dinner by Raffael’s Restaurant and music by Boston Sound. The team appreciates all the support it receives from its communities and would love to see lots of people enjoying a great night out at the auction.
