The Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School / FIRST Robotics Team 88

On the floor at the Georgia Dome.

Team 88 has arrived safely at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta for the 2010 FIRST Robotics National Championships. Today’s schedule includes several practice matches and then, after lunch, the preliminary qualification matches.

You can follow the TJ2 action from “Curie” Division at the NASA Web site via live webcast. View matches here. You can also visit our Web site media page to see photos of the day-to-day action and an exclusive look into the drama of the competition.

More than 10,000 young people will compete with 500 robots on six fields, while teams meet and work in the pits. Join us for a celebration of everything that makes FIRST unique! This event is free and open to the public.

After two days of great competition and solid performances from our drive and strategy teams, TJ2 takes home the 2010 Boston Regional banner. Thanks to flawless teamwork from our alliance partners, Team 1768,  and Team 1922 , Team 88 was able to bring home thier second Regional Championship banner in the team’s history.

The drive team of Pat Koczela, Elias Loucagos, & Zeke Georgantas, masterfully coached by former Team driver, Tom Calef, put together a 7-2 match record in the qualifying rounds and secured a 4th seed going into the finals.

Thanks to insightful analysis by Wes Clark his Scouting Team, TJ2 chose strong alliance partners and proceeded to go undefeated in the quarter-final and semi-final rounds. Then, in one of the most exciting finals we have seen this season, TJ2 and their alliance partners won the first match and then took control and grabbed the Boston Regional banner with a 12-11 victory in the second match of the best of three series.

Kudos to the whole team for a tremendous weekend. Now, its off to Atlanta for the FIRST National Championships in April.

Check out Team 88’s Photo & Video Gallery on our own media page.

- by Ali McGrath

The qualifying matches of the Boston Regional have begun and TJ is doing better than ever! The day started with opening ceremonies, in which Woodie Flowers and a number of others spoke. With four countries represented here today (Brazil, United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States), four national anthems were sung.

After the conclusion of the ceremonies, our team played in the first match of the day. Our bot worked flawlessly and our drive team performed at its finest. We won the match and the rest we have played in so far. In one particular match, we won 8 to 2, scoring most, if not all, of the goals ourselves. Our autonomous has now scored in most of the matches we have played, which is very exciting. We use the sensors to find the balls, and the camera to find the goal and shoot. Thank you Dave Silva :]

Our last match, which we played just minutes ago, was a surprising victory. The opposing defensive robot made sure we were unable to score and at one point, unable to move as well. We were able to score 3 balls, however, tieing the score. We made it out lucky, because the opposing team obtained two penalties, making the score 2 to 1.

Our ranking is 4 as of right now and hopefully with victories in the next 2 matches we have, it will go even higher.

TJ2 makes it's presence known. Photo by J. Lynch

TJ² travelled by bus to Baltimore last week to compete against 49 FIRST robotics teams from the East Coast.  These teams came from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, and Virginia.  The competition lasts three days.  Thursday was inspection and practice day. TJ² then played in 7 qualification matches Friday resulting in 6 wins and 1 tie. The Friday awards ceremony decorated TJ² with the Top Regional Animation Award and the Top Regional Website Award! The team continued Saturday with five more matches – winning 4  and losing 1.  At the end of these elimination rounds, the team was seeded in third place out of the forty-nine competing teams.  The top eight seeded teams then pick two other teams to go into the final elimination matches.  TJ² CEO and scouting group leader, B-R senior Wes Clark and his student scouting team, chose Team 686 / Bovine Intervention from Linganore High School, Frederick, MD., and Team 768 / TechnoWarriors from Woodlawn High School, Baltimore, MD.

Earning an over-all 3rd seed, Team 88 selects strong alliance partners.

The students operating the  2010 TJ² robot are B-R Senior Pat Koczela, B-R Senior Zeke Georgantas, and B-R Senior Elias Loucagos, coached by engineering mentor, and former team driver, Tom Calef.  The team finished the competition as semi-finalists, losing to the eventual competition champions.  The competition was strong and the team was very proud of their finish.

TJ² will be competing at the Boston FIRST Regional March 25-27.  The competition is free, and the team would like to invite you all to the Aganis Arena at Boston University to cheer them on.

The robot and our drive team performed well in today’s matches. After 7 very competitive matches, TJ2s robot went 4-1-1 (with one match that didn’t count).