States Recap

Thursday April 16-18th

This weekend Bedford Express traveled to Saginaw Valley State University for the FIRST in Michigan State Championship. We knew the competition would be harder and more challenging. However we came into the competition determined and ready to play. 

Drive team in queue getting ready for a match.

On Thursday April 16th, we set up our pit and calibrated (to ensure accuracy on a new field) for our robot. Once we were calibrated we played a few practice matches where we tested our shots and autos. After practice matches ended, we played 3 qualification matches and won 2 of them! Although we didn’t win all of our matches this day we felt good on how our robot was performing and were excited for our matches the following day.

Here are some of our build members making sure the robot is ready for our next match.

On Friday April 17th, we played the rest of our qualification matches and went 3-6. Although this definitely wasn't what we hoped for, we had some tough matches and felt confident that our robot would be ready for playoffs the next day. We worked around the challenges of sometimes being the only robot able to score and some mechanical issues with our intake breaking and wires breaking from tough defense. We ended the day with alliance selection as the first pick of alliance 7. The captain was team 9215, T-Town Tech. Our 2nd pick to round off our alliance was team 4398, Gladiators. We were very grateful to be selected for this alliance.

These are the drive teams of our alliance.

On Saturday April 18th, we competed in playoffs and were eliminated in the 2nd round of the double elimination bracket. These matches were tough, losing our second match by less than 20 points. 

At States our team was awarded The Industrial Design Award. This award celebrates the team that demonstrates industrial design principles, striking a balance between form, function, and aesthetics. 

Here is our team receiving the award.

Although not placing how we wished too, due to doing good at our districts and the awards we won we were able to qualify for Worlds in Houston, Texas. This next week we will be chugging along getting our robot prepared to face the best teams in the world!

Thank you to all of our coaches, mentors, parents, and sponsors for making all of this possible!!