Inspire at Conrad Qualifier

By Ethan

This weekend, SEM sent four teams to the first qualifying tournament of the FTC Robotics Rover Ruckus 2018-2019 season. Iron Reign won the top award (Inspire) and advanced. For reference, Iron Reign is last year's FTC World Championship Motivate Award winner and is the "varsity" team of the SEM Robotics organization.

Left to right: Janavi Chadha, Bhanaviya Venkat, Justin Bonsell, Abhijit Bhattaru, Charlotte Leakey, Karina Lara, Ethan Helfman, Evan Daane, Karim Virani. Not shown: Kenna Tanaka, Arjun Vikram and mentors Catherine Lux and Calvin Boykin.

Imperial Robotics was a finalist for the Think Award due to the excellence of their engineering journal.

Hudson Shields, Alisa Lin, Blaine Wells, Christian Saldana, Rohit Shankar. Not shown: Thu Le, Jonathan Hamada.

Our two new rookie teams beat back tough odds from a field of seasoned teams. Iron Star became the 4th alliance captain in the playoff rounds.

Left to right: Katelyn Cumplido, Shawn Halimman, Henry Le, Evan Branson, Paul Lea, Aaron Daane. Not shown: Beau Aveton, Cooper Clem, Harish Jai Ganesh, Benjamin Oommen.

Iron Core was publicly invited to join the 3rd alliance in the playoffs, but graciously declined because they had a new fault in their robot and didn't want to drag the alliance down just to get into the playoffs. This was a highly laudable moment at the tournament and demonstrates the highest level of sportsmanship. FTC is about so much more than the robot, and no team emphasized that more then Iron Core.

Left to right: Mahesh Natamai, Jose Lomeli, Ben Bruick, Samuel Adler, Ephraim Sun.