Known as the Loveland Nuts & Bolts
By Kevin Seig
The Robotics team, known as the Loveland Nuts & Bolts, has been busy with competitions.
They compete annually in the First Tech Challenge, or FTC, competition. The most recent competition included the state tournament, but they first had to perform in the qualifying tournaments.
To advance to the state tournament, a team must perform well in a qualifying tournament. After participating in two of these qualifying tournaments, the team had the chance to advance to the state tournament.
In competitions, teams are held to many standards.
“Teams are judged not only on their robot, but also on such aspects as how well the team connects and reaches out to the community, how well the team did in the design and building stages of their robot, how well the team documents its design, builds, and revises, how well the team promotes the ideals of STEM to their community, etc.,” Mr. Phil Marchal (Computer Science) said.
The first qualifying tournament that they participated in was at Springboro High School on January 17th and 18th. It was a round robin style tournament where their robot competed five times. They finished in fourth place, which guaranteed them a spot in the elimination tournament. Twelve teams participate in the elimination portion of the tournament, and they were knocked out in the first round.
Multiple awards are presented at each competition. At this tournament, the team was awarded for the control systems they built and coded in their robot.
The second qualifying tournament was held on January 30th and 31st at Walnut Hills High School. The team placed fourth out of twenty four teams in the round robin portion of the tournament, and this once again guaranteed them a spot in the elimination portion of the competition. In the elimination portion of the qualifying tournament, they placed as the runner-up, which meant that they qualified for the next level tournament, the state tournament.
In their second qualifying tournament, they won two awards: inspire and promote.
The state tournament was held on February 13th and 14th at iSpace. There were thirty-two teams from five different states that competed. The team ended up finishing 19 out of 32. This was not enough for them to qualify for the next round of competition, which is called the Super Regional.
“We had a good, but not great, day. The competition was very good,” Mr. Marchal said.
This article is printed with permission and was previously published in The Roar, the student newspaper of Loveland High School. You can follow The Roar on Twitter.
