Robotics Team Reaches Semifinals in Competition – ithaca.com

The Trumansburg High School Team 5254:HYPE (Helping Youth Pursue Excellence) competed March 15-18 in the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics Finger Lakes Regional event

Despite qualifying outside of the top eight teams they were invited to join the sixth ranked team as a first-round playoff pick. Team HYPE joined Alliance Captain Team 6490 Panther Robotics, a rookie team from Geneva, and Team 3838 Roc City Robotix from Rochester in the playoffs.

The team rose to the heightened competition level and guided their alliance to a quarterfinal win over the third ranked alliance. Advancing to the semifinals (the equivalent of the Final Four of regional competitions) the alliance lost their first match against the second ranked alliance by only seven points then were eliminated from the competition in match two after one of the alliance teams robots was disabled during the match.

Over the four days of practice and competitions the team gained valuable competition experience through scouting, team building, programming, strategizing and optimizing the robot.

Harrison Farnham a Junior CAD designer, builder and driver admitted that robotics is really hard but really rewarding at the same time. He enjoyed testing things that we didnt think worked or didnt know worked.

At FIRST events you meet a lot of cool people through your team and mentors and get a lot of real-world experience that you might not get in school. Freshman builder and lead scout Emma Williamson had intelligent conversations about robots that she wouldnt have been able to have at the beginning of the season.

For Emma winning would have been cool but it wasnt in the forefront of my mind. Building the robot for the competition was most important to me. I learned so much about the team effort it takes to build a robot in only six weeks and made a lot of friends along the way.

Program Manager Brad Farnham summarized the weekend as lots of fun, hard work, smiles, and yes a few tears. I am so grateful to be working with such a great group of young adults.

Hoping to win a berth to the World Championships in St. Louis the team will be traveling to Long Island to compete in the SBPLI Regional event March 29th-April 1st.

Team HYPE is 100 percent community supported. Through company sponsorships, grants, donations, bake sales, bottle and can drives and dinners Team HYPE has raised close to $20,000 to fund their regional competitions.

The team is striving to make it to St Louis again this year for Championships and needs to raise an additional $20,000 to attend. To help support the team, visit gofundme.com/5254-team-hype.

Come shake off the winter blues at the Robo-Jam fundraiser (chicken bar-b-que, three live bands and a silent auction) on Saturday April 8

from 2-6 p.m. at the American Legion in Trumansburg.

For more information visit their webpage at http://www.frc5254.com or Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/FRC5254. Brad Farnham

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Robotics Team Reaches Semifinals in Competition - ithaca.com