There were 86 teams that played on our court in Atlanta. Of those teams we were rated 9th. It takes a long time to explain how the end game works, so I won't go into that, but we ended up moving up to 8th place in the finals. This allowed us to choose our Alliance for the finals competition. Just like in all other sports, the number 1 seed plays the number 8 rated seed, 2 plays 7 and so on. Since we were the number 8 seed, we had to play the 1st seed. It was the best 2 out of 3. We lost our first 2 matches with the first seed and that ended our tournament. We were 7-1 in the tournament and after the finals we were 7-3. That's a pretty good record.
This was a pretty amazing deal being a rookie team, but to show you how amazing it was, I will compare us to Ponca City. Ponca City had a great robot and they really helped us a lot this year. I'm sure they will continue to help us as we learn how to better play this game. Ponca City has been playing this game for 8 years and they have been lucky enough to get to go to Atlanta most of those years. In Atlanta, they have never been picked to play in the finals and they have also never been ranked high enough to be one of the teams who get to do the picking. In our first year, we were ranked high enough to be one of the teams who did the picking. Of the 344 teams that went to Atlanta, only 32 teams got to pick their Alliance and we were one of them.
We had 8 students, 2 teachers, and several mentors go to Atlanta to represent Tri County Technology Center in the Robotics Competition and I think they did an excellent job. We need to remember that this was not a project that just 8 students did, but a project that all of TCTC accomplished together. If it wouldn't have been for all the students who helped us work on the robot, built parts for the robot, painted the robot, donated money from their activity fund, and cheered us on during the competition, we never would have accomplished this task. Also, all the TCTC employees who brought us food, gave us money, encouraged us, came out to the robot to help us build it and everything else the great employees of this organization did, without your help we never would have been able to accomplish this task.
So, if you see a TCTC employee or a TCTC student, give them a big pat on the back and say job well done. This has truly been a very successful TCTC project. One last thing, if you see one of the mentors who spent hours and hours helping us build the robot and then spent their own money traveling to Kansas City and Atlanta to help our team, please thank them for all they have done.