Participating Teams and Schedule
We now have our full slate of teams participating in the upcoming Festival of Champions! Along with our 2017 Chairman’s Award winning Teams, 3132, Thunder Down Under, from Sydney, Australia, and 2614, MARS, from Morgantown, West Virginia, USA, as our guests of honor, we have the following teams competing:
Representing Houston
973, Greybots, Alliance Captain, from Atascadero, California, USA
1011, CRUSH, from Tuscon, Arizona, USA
4188, Columbus Space Program, from Columbus, Georgia, USA
5499, Bay Orangutans, from Berkeley, California, USA
Representing St Louis
2767, Stryke Force, Alliance Captain, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
254, The Cheesy Poofs, from San Jose, California, USA
862, Lightning Robotics, from Canton, Michigan, USA
1676, The Pascack Pioneers, from Montvale, New Jersey, USA
You may notice that Team 4188 was not actually on the Winning Alliance at FIRST Championship Houston, but instead was on the Finalist Alliance. Unfortunately, Team 2928, Viking Robotics, from Seattle, Washington, USA, who was on the Winning Alliance, will not be able to join us at the Festival. Team 973, as Houston Alliance Captain, selected Team 4188 to complete their Alliance for the Festival competition, per the rules published here.
These teams will be participating in a welcome reception at FIRST HQ in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA, the evening of Thursday, July 27th*. Friday, July 28th, invited teams will be splitting their time between a visit to Dean Kamen’s company, DEKA, which is very near FIRST HQ, and time on the field at the event venue, getting their robots calibrated and ready for the big competition the next day. They may even get a little practice in with their alliance partners during this time.
Saturday morning, July 29th, will be the competition itself, and that afternoon invited teams will be having dinner at Dean’s home in Bedford, NH, a town adjacent to Manchester.
The Competition
The competition portion of the event will take place at the SNHU Arena in Manchester. (Our event is not yet showing on the venue calendar, but will be soon!) This is where the Granite State Regional had been held before New England transitioned to the District model, and it’s a great venue for this event.
At this time, the competition is scheduled to take place between 9AM and 12PM Eastern. Both FIRST Tech Challenge and FIRST Robotics Competition matches will be run during this period. Everyone is welcome to attend this portion of the Festival in person, and join the party! The event is free and open to the public, just like all other FIRST competitions. We will have plenty of good seating available. Driving directions (does anyone really still need those these days?) and parking options (OK, you might still need those these days) for the venue can be found here.
For those who can’t make it in person, the event will be webcast. We’ll have more details on viewing options at a later time, and we are working to make the at-home viewing experience well worth your time.
Frank
*Teams may even be offered a chance to see ‘the door’ behind which FIRST Robotics Competition game development takes place. For some reason, ‘the door’ seems fascinating to some students in FRC. I don’t know why, as ‘the door’ is just ‘a door’. (Though to be honest, opening the door would lead to an experience not unlike this.)
