03/10/2025
I want to take a minute here to brag, not about myself, but about the Walnut Hills High School robotics team The NUTS! This past weekend this group of 15 high school students competed in the Ohio State Championship for FIRST Tech Challenge robotics. These tournaments consist of a judging session where teams explain their process throughout the year, including but not limited to: design of the robot, programming, outreach, and sustainability of the program. To supplement this judging session the team is also required to submit an Engineering Portfolio, which is 15 pages long and details the course of their season.
Then comes the robot comeptition aspect of the weekend, matches are 2v2 and consist of three compenents: a 30 second autonomous section, a 2 minute driver controlled period, and the last 30 seconds of the driver controlled period is endgame. These kids finished 4th overall at the end of qualification matches which made them an "Alliance Captain" for the playoff rounds, where they are able to choose their partner for a double elimination playoff bracket. They lost their first alliance match, and with their backs against the wall managed to advance all the way to the lower bracket finals before being knocked out, finishing 3rd in the state.
At the end of these playoff matches awards are announced, including the Inspire Award which is the top award at these competitions and in order to win it you have to be a model FIRST team and excel not only in all of the judging categories, but also perform well during the robot competition stage. These kids managed to finish 2nd in the Inspire Award, which means they missed out on advancing to the World Championship by one spot.
Even though they did not advance to worlds, they were one of three teams to account for 200+ points in a match by themselves, and were one of only two teams to achieve the hardest portion of the robot competition, a double staged hang, which they were able to achieve consistently.
I have been fortunate enough to be able to act as a coach for the team for the past 12 years and could not be more proud of what this team achieved at the State Championship, it was truly incredible to watch them go out and perform how they did.
Ohio is one of the more competitive states in the country for this particular robotics program, and the last six teams remaining in the playoff round were all Cincinnati teams, they stepped up in one of the hardest regions to compete in in the entire country and performed at the top of it. I just wanted to give them a shoutout as they have been working on this since September and put together a heck of a season, which thankfully, is not over yet! Due to finishing 2nd place in the Inspire award they have been invited to a FIRST Tech Challenge Premier Event, which will happen later this spring/summer.
Congratulations to the Walnut Hills High School robotics program on their excellent performance this weekend!
