On Saturday, February 1, Pingree Robotics teams traveled to Barrington, NH to participate in a VEX Robotics competition. Schools in New Hampshire have been participating in VEX since its beginning and usually are very strong competitors.
A VEX tournament always starts with a round-robin with each robot competing in seven matches over the course of the morning. Pingree bot 4716B, which was built, programmed, and driven by Sofia Makowska ’20, Rick Li ’21, and Alex Rickards ’21, put up the strongest performance in Pingree Robotics history, going 7-0 in the round-robin and being the top seed heading into the elimination round.
The elimination round features eight alliances of two robots competing in a single-elimination tournament. Robot 4716C by Nikhil Gorur ’21, Cooper Sullivan ’21 and Shawn Li ’21, was able to partner with Pingree 4716D by Jack Raisides ’21 and Ashwin Ramanathan ’21 as the sixth seed. Robot 4716A by Shakib Tidjani ’21, Arvind Pillai ’20, and Jay Goodman ’22 were part of the seventh-seed alliance.
Three of the four robots advanced out of the quarter-finals, first-seed 4716B and the sixth-seed pairing of 4716C and 4716D. 4716B was upset in the semifinals, but 4716C and D staged an upset to move into the finals, where they lost to the tournament champions, an alliance from Kennett High School, traditionally a very strong program.
It was a very strong performance from all the robots. Getting three robots into the semifinals was a Pingree first, and having two in the finals was also unprecedented. Congratulations to all, and best of luck in landing a spot at the Southern New England regional tournament in March.