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Last weekend, Team 4909 traveled to Reading Memorial High School to compete in the NE District North Shore event. We arrived Friday night to have our robot inspected, and set up the ‘pit’ area, a 10ft-by-10ft space allotted to each team where the pit crew could work on the robot in between matches.
The competition began Saturday morning, with 39 teams from all over New England competing to take home a Blue Banner and title of ‘winner’. Matches are played with a “Blue” alliance competing against a “Red” alliance, each consisting of 3 randomly assigned teams. During qualification matches, all alliances are randomly assigned, and are different from match to match. Each team is guaranteed to play in 12 qualification matches. After the conclusion of this event’s 78 qualification matches, we ended in 5th place! The elimination rounds began on Sunday morning, with the top 8 seeded teams picking 2 other teams to accompany them in the playoff matches. Since we were ranked 5th at the end of qualification matches, we were given the opportunity to pick members to be part of the 4th seeded playoff alliance. We invited Team 1073 The Force Team from Hollis, NH, and Team 509 Red Storm from Bedford, NH, to be part of our alliance, and they both accepted!
Unfortunately, we were not able to make it into the finals, after being eliminated in the quarterfinals against the 3rd seeded alliance. However, we did not come home in despair, since we were presented with the Entrepreneurship Award for the second time! The judges said that Team 4909 “makes their sponsors proud AND even let the sponsors in on their accomplishments. They have a safety plan, the support of their friends, a feeder pipeline, and they have packaged all of this in a clear and concise business plan.” Consideration for this award is based on the team’s ability to explain how their business plan reflects their day-to-day work as a part of the program, and affects their continuous contribution to FIRST. At our last competition, Granite State Districts, we were given the honor of winning this award for the first time in our history, and are so proud to have brought it home again this time! 
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Our second district competition of the season takes place today in Reading, MA! Due to Covid restrictions, the event will only be open for virtual viewing. We would love to have you all join us through the Twitch live stream! Here is the schedule for this weekend’s events:
Saturday, March 19, 2022: - Opening Ceremonies: 10:30 AM - Qualification Matches: 11:00 AM - 7:00 PM Sunday, March 20, 2022: - Opening Ceremonies: 9:00 AM - Qualification Matches: 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Alliance Selections: 12:00 PM - 12:30 PM - Playoffs/Elimination Rounds: 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM - Awards Ceremony: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM *This schedule is subject to change. All times are estimated based on the flow of rounds. For more information about the event, click here. To watch us compete on live stream, visit https://www.twitch.tv/nefirst_blue Scouting field view: https://www.twitch.tv/nefirst_orange Team 4909’s 2022 Robot Reveal Night was a success! Many of our friends, families, and sponsors took time out of their day to hear an overview of build season and see our robot “Pandora” in action. The night consisted of our team leads highlighting their specific responsibilities including managing the build process, building of the subsystems, programming the robot, and a Team Operations update. The audience was able to gain insight into what it took to build the robot and each of our subsystems; the intake, the shooter and singulator, the turret, and the climber. After we finished talking about the robot, we did a Granite State recap and conducted a robot demonstration by simulating an official match. We successfully scored cargo into the hub and climbed the hangar. Thank you to everyone who attended and we appreciate your support! Please see below for some pictures from the event.
This past weekend, Team 4909 traveled to Salem, NH to attend the Granite State District Event. We arrived at Salem High School on Thursday to get our robot inspected and set up the team's pit. The pit is the area where teams keep their robots between matches and is also where they hold all of their tools and spare parts. The competition officially began last Friday with 39 teams from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Vermont participating. Matches are played with a “Blue” alliance of 3 teams competing against a “Red” alliance of 3 teams. All alliances are randomly assigned and alliance configurations are different from match to match. Each team plays 12 qualification matches over the course of two days. After the team’s qualification matches, we ended up in 12th place!
The elimination rounds began with the top 8 seeded teams picking two other teams for their playoff alliance. In regards to alliances, because of the team’s success in qualifying matches, we were given the opportunity to be the first pick by the 3rd seed alliance captain, Team 131 CHAOS from Manchester, NH! Their second pick was Team 6690 MV roboPride from Concord, NH. Unfortunately, we lost in the semi-finals against the first seed alliance. Even though we were not able to make it to finals, we were extremely excited to bring home the Entrepreneurship Award! According to FIRST Robotics, the Entrepreneurship Award is given to the team that “develops a comprehensive business plan in order to define, manage, and achieve the team’s ongoing objectives. This team displays entrepreneurial enthusiasm as well as demonstrates the vital planning and business skills to ensure a self-sustaining program”. Evaluation is based on the team’s ability to explain to the judges how their plan helps to ensure the team’s continued participation in FIRST. This includes how their business plan is organized, how the team makes decisions and divides their workload, how the team keeps students, mentors, and sponsors actively engaged, how they recruit and train future team members, and how they celebrate success and document lessons learned to prevent repeating mistakes. According to the Judges, our team “Displays entrepreneurial enthusiasm as well as demonstrates vital planning and business skills to ensure a self-sustaining program. This team had an infusion of 8th-grade students last year and quadrupled in size. Students operate the team as a small business and they have a solid business plan to back it up. They make a point to create a safe and inclusive space for their members”. We are so proud to have won this award for the first time in Team 4909’s history!
 The team’s next competition is the NE District North Shore Event, which will take place from March 18-20 at Reading Memorial High School in Reading, MA. We are excited to compete again and hope that you will join us!
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