By Caleb Peckham
While only two time zones east of Arizona, the city of St. Louis seems many worlds away from TPA, as the members of the Tempe Prep Robotics team recently discovered. First of all, as would be expected, the massively flooded Mississippi looked like it could swallow all the “rivers” in Arizona. Then, the Gateway Arch took a dizzying approach to national monuments. Most importantly, a flood of geeky robotics teams swallowed downtown St. Louis, and right among those teams was the Tempe Prep delegation, which held its own in the international field.
In March, the Knights surprised many by earning a spot in the FRC championships, so the team was eager to show that their robot “Tron” was a worthy member of the field. The competition was divided into four brackets, and Tempe Prep was entered in the Galileo division. After a few quick repairs, a little bit of fine tuning, and some practice time, Tron was ready for what Galileo would offer. The robot did admirably well over three days, probably scoring more points in eight matches than Tempe Prep had managed in the last two regional tournaments combined. The team finished 32nd in the division’s field of 100, and functioned mostly as planned.
Unfortunately, the team wasn’t chosen for the elimination round of the Galileo division, but the Knights still had the opportunity to watch the exciting action. The winning alliance from Galileo eventually triumphed over the other divisions (Curie, Archimedes, and Newton) and won the overall championship. Galileo proved to be the toughest division of all, so the Knights considered it a great success to have finished in the top third.
Of course, traveling to St. Louis was about much more than simply dropping Tron off and watching it go. The team, although full of distance runners and varsity athletes, was frequently complaining of the continuous walking necessary throughout the five day trip. In addition, the Knights, at last cognizant of Tempe Prep’s call to be leaders, boldly cut to the front of food lines and took what was rightfully theirs. Ignoring the annoyed hotel staff, the Knights played cards much too late and arose with bleary eyes much too early.
At this point, the future of the Tempe Prep Robotics team is still unclear. FRC has proven to be a great avenue for exposing students to STEM and giving them a chance to experience hands-on engineering, but many seniors will be graduating. The team hopes to continue the success of this past year and be a competitive force in Arizona FIRST Robotics for a long time to come. Of course, it will be difficult to replicate the luck and chance occurrences that earned the Knights a state championship, but “fortune favors the bold,” or at least that’s what Tron told us.