On Wednesday, the AdamBots traveled to Saginaw for the FIRST in Michigan State Championship! Arriving as the #14 ranked team of 160 qualifying teams, we were assigned to the Dow Division. We spent Thursday playing practice and qualification matches, ending the day with two wins, and one loss. On Friday, we presented for several robot and business awards, as well as continuing to play qualification matches. We filled the set the event high score of 114 and ended with a record of 8-4-0, ranking us 6th of 40. As the 4th alliance captains, we selected teams 2771 Code Red and 1322 GRAYT to join our alliance.

On Saturday, we began the day with the quarterfinals rounds against the 5th alliance. We won the first and lost the second, leading to a tiebreaker match, which we narrowly won 100-98. Moving onto the semifinals, we substituted GRAYT for Team 5641 Byron for greater defensive and control capabilities. We managed to beat the eventual division champions once, but lost the tiebreaker, ending our elimination run. After the division elimination rounds finished, we stayed for the awards ceremony. We won the Entrepreneurship Award on our field, making three years in a row of winning the award at the state championship!

Following the awards ceremony was the championship playoff, in which the champions of each of the four divisions meet to determine one champion alliance. In a dramatic semifinals round, both the Ford alliance and the Dow alliance managed to upset the alliances of the Consumers Energy and DTE fields, moving onto the finals. In their first of the three-match round, the teams ended with a perfect tie of 99-99 and the exact same distribution of points, resulting in no winner being awarded. The second match ended in favor of Ford, while the third ended in favor of Dow, pushing the state championship finals to a rare overtime match. In an even stranger turn of events, the overtime match resulted in another perfect tie of 95-95, pushing the finals to the first-ever double overtime. In the end, the Ford alliance of 3604, 4362, and 862 won 97-90 to take home the gold.

Due to our outstanding performance on and off the field, the AdamBots ended ranked 20th in the state, earning us a spot at the world championship! Come see us competing at the highest level at Cobo Hall in Detroit, April 24th-27th. We hope to see you there!

Written by Cate Sullivan

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