Cyborg Cats Qualify for Worlds

For the second time in its three years of existence, Westminster’s robotics team, the Cyborg Cats, qualified for FIRST Robotics Competition.  There are two ways to qualify for this competition: winning one of a few prestigious awards or being a regional champion.  During its first year in the 2012 season, the team had the honor of receiving the Rookie All-Star award, which qualified them for Worlds alongside some of the best teams in the nation and all around the world.  This year, the team did well enough to compete in Worlds without the assistance of an award.

At the St. Louis Regional, the team’s second competition this season, they fought hard with their randomly matched alliances with two other teams.  After a rough go-around in Pekin, Illinois, the Cyborg Cats were thrilled with their admirable performance.  After 11 qualification matches, they were ecstatic to find out that they had ranked second out of 45 teams.  This meant they were privileged to pick two teams to join them in the elimination matches.

“We were competing, and fighting hard, and that was my success in terms of the robot, so I was happy just seeing us out on the field. I was surprised we were ranked second throughout the entire deal,” said the Team Captain, Alex Kessel, junior.

“The excitement of the success gave us something in common to be excited about.  It made us appreciate even more the hard work that each member put in,” said the Systems Engineer, Rebecca Liu, sophomore.

Liu was instrumental to the team’s success.  She used her knowledge of the game to strategize which teams the Cyborg Cats would ally themselves with.  She chose wisely, picking strong offensive and defensive partners.  Now it was up to the skill of the drivers and robots to determine if the team would move on.

The elimination matches were set up in a bracket format, starting with the lowest ranked alliance competing against the highest ranked alliance.  Each alliance must then win two out of three matches to move on to the next round.

The team in the stands was standing up, cheering loudly for their teammates driving the robot.  The alliance lost their first match when two of the robots stopped moving on the field, but they did not let that stop them.  The alliance won the following two matches and qualified for the next round, a repeat performance of the first round.  The team then moved on to the final round and lost.  However, the team managed to qualify for worlds because they competed against the first ranked alliance in the finals.  One of the three teams on that alliance had already qualified for Worlds at a previous competition.  Being the team captain of the second ranked alliance, the Cyborg Cats were invited to be a part of Worlds.

Not only did the team qualify for worlds, they also won an Imagery Award for their clean and professional appearance, a Safety Award for their pit work area, and all members received medals for being Regional Finalists.