Antelope Valley robotics teams make history

By Brianna Mariotti, Team 399 Eagle Robotics

This past weekend [April 3-4], Team 399 Eagle Robotics from Lancaster High School and Team 2339 Robolopes from Antelope Valley High School took the San Diego FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Regional win at Valley View Casino Center.

They worked alongside Team 3255 SuperNurds from San Pasqual High School located in Escondido CA.

“To see each and every team cheer for one another is a beautiful thing. They inspire each other, and learn from each other. I don’t know of any other sport where opposing team members offer one another encouragement as they do in the FIRST community,” stated Team 399 Mentor Eileen Wenzel.

Antelope Valley teams 399 and 2339 have a long history of competing together, with a total of one offseason and four official playoff appearances.

Of those five competitions, the recent San Diego Regional was the first they won together.

“We had an all­rookie drive team, none of them really knew what to expect when going out and driving our robot during competition,” stated Team 2339 Drive Coach Myrle McLernon. “They made a lot of mistakes in our first regional and learned a lot, but they managed to pull through and communicated really well by our second regional. They listened to me very well, and by the end of the regional, they were making very few mistakes.”

The new FRC Game Recycle Rush removes emphasis on wins and losses and ranks teams based on average match performance. By the end of 10 qualification matches, Team 399 ranked third of 58, with an average of 107.3 – just 9.9 points away from the first ranked team. And Robolopes ranked 21st.

As the #2 seeded alliance captain, 399 made the right choice in choosing teams 3255 and 2339.

Quarterfinals left the alliance ranked first, against the seven other alliances.

Their average of 202.5 had everyone on their feet in anticipation for semifinals. Once again they ranked first, averaging 145.66. In finals, the alliance that wins two of three matches takes the regional win.

They won the first match; and the second match left the arena in silence as the audience awaited the final scores. The final score was 187 to 186 – the #2 seeded alliance won the competition by one point!

“Looking up and seeing the scores for our second finals match was very frightening. We knew the scores would be close, and when we saw that we had won by one point, everyone in the building went crazy,” stated Matthew Tweedy, driver for Team 399. “After two months of hard work and dedication to the team, a win over the #1 alliance felt amazing!”

For the 16^th straight year, the team will be headed to the World Championships in St. Louis, Missouri, later this month. This makes the second time in two years that they have double qualified. In 2014, Team 399 double qualified for World Championships by winning both the regional and Chairman’s award at the Inland Empire Regional. They have done so again this year by winning the San Diego Regional and the Chairman’s award at the Ventura Regional just days earlier.

Eagle Robotics’ theme for this year is “The Legacy Rises,” and it has been doing just that.

Previous related story: Team 399 kicks off 2015 robotics season

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