King’s had two teams competing with some very well-designed robots.
The A team (Sam Anderson and Max Jiang, Ben Lake was unfortunately unwell) started off well with three wins and a loss (to the B team) on the Saturday morning, rising to be ranked 2nd (from 51 teams) after lunch. Some programming issues saw the afternoon being a bit less successful with one win and two losses. They ended the day ranked a respectable 20th. On Sunday they had some tough opposition managing one win and two losses (the last one being a very closely fought battle with the lead changing hands constantly throughout the game). They ended the round robin matches ranked 24th.
They progressed to the elimination round of 16 in the 14th seeded alliance. A close game against 3rd seed but unfortunately just came up short in the final seconds. A good overall performance by the team.
The B team (Gerry Wang, Ethan Huang and Derek Peng) struggled throughout the competition with reliability issues and had one win and three losses by lunch Saturday. Some work over lunch helped sort out some problems and they had two good wins and a tight loss in the afternoon to end Saturday ranked 30th. Structural problems proved their undoing on Sunday morning, and the robot suffered too much critical damage in some aggressive matches, resulting in three losses and a drop to finish the round robin ranked 40th of the 51 teams.
Ethan Kyle (Major, 2017-21) was ranked 2nd after round robin and was part of the second seeded alliance for elimination rounds. His alliance went on to win a tight final to become national champions and qualify for the world championships in May.
All round, the teams had a great time at Nationals and represented the College well.
John Bennet
Teacher of Physics
