More Champions
More to celebrate in Harbor Springs!
Your Harbor Springs High School “Baywatch” Robotics team just finished a 19 match playoff (!) to win the District Championship and punch their ticket to States!
Congratulations Robotic Rams!!!!!
I cannot begin to tell you how nerve wracking this was from the cheap seats. The poise these kids showed was incredible. The payoffs in these robotics happen after 80 qualifying rounds. Then a double elimination playoff of 8 teams. The Rams were ranked 1st going into the playoffs but lost in their first match in a close one.
They moved to the “lower” bracket and had to win out through 5 more rounds to make the final. The final was a best 2 of 3 match. Your Rams lost the first match, and won the second.
The third and deciding match ended in a 128-128 TIE! forcing the Rams to have to compete once again for the win. In the tiebreaker they prevailed to win it all.
Whew. These students built a smart and tough bot, coded it to perform, and fixed and upgraded it multiple times on the fly throughout the weekend. I am honestly in awe of these kids.
In perhaps the strongest robotics state in the country, with the Big Three motor companies all supporting the competition-the Harbor Springs Rams Robotics Team leaves the weekend as the 4th ranked team out of hundreds in the entire state!
Talk about punching above their weight. There are no divisions in robotics, so Harbor competes against schools 5x bigger, and yet…they are a top 5 team in the whole state of Michigan. And likely sitting in the top 25 in the country. AMAZING!
This video isn't of our team (our competition isn't posted yet). But I wanted to give you a sense of what the kids accomplished. All the competitions across the world are set up the same each year. This year is an underwater theme. The robots in this video are doing the same functions the "Baywatch" bot performs in the finals-just like the one they won this weekend. I wouldn't even know where to start, and here these kids are building and programing these beasts: https://youtu.be/TsH6YRBJdjE?si=fWiKfgEttIibfK7p
(If you get a chance to go to one of these things-they are something).
The Robotics competition is organized around the idea of "Gracious Professionalism." The whole event is set up to encourage cooperation, teamwork, and positive interactions. Pretty cool to see that in action---and to see little Harbor Springs come out on top!