2017 FRC Blogs: Michigan State Championship

Last week, the AdamBots competed in the Michigan State Championship against 159 other top teams in the state! Thursday through Friday we played qualification matches in the highly competitive Dow Division. We ended these matches with a 4-8 record and in rank 37 due to difficulties climbing the rope. However, team 5150 the Hybrid Hornets selected us as their first pick, securing us a spot on the 7th seed alliance for elimination matches. We also joined with our sister team, 5436 the Cyber Cats. In our first elimination round we were against the 2nd seed alliance. We lost the first game but won the next two, so we moved onto the semifinals! The 6th seed alliance proved to be strong though, as they narrowly beat us to get a spot in the division finals.

This was far from the end of our success though. Throughout the competition six minor safety awards are given. We earned three of them and were runners-up for the Industrial Safety Award. Furthermore, we earned the Entrepreneurship Award for our business plan and team strategies. The championship ended with an even greater achievement—the Regional Chairman’s Award! As this is the highest honor available at this competition, it automatically qualifies us to compete at the St. Louis World Championship. We are proud to be the only team in history to have won both the Chairman’s Award and Entrepreneurship Award at a district championship!

Although the award guarantees a spot, our final district ranking of 47 out of 451 teams would allow us to compete in St. Louis nonetheless. We will depart Tuesday afternoon and compete through Saturday. Watch for competition updates on our Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook!