2020 Kendrick Castillo Memorial Tournament
Team 4550 participated in the inaugural Kendrick Castillo Memorial Tournament at East High School in Denver, Colorado. The tournament began with a speech from Kendrick Castillo's father. His loss has had a massive impact on the community, but we could never forget how amazing of an individual he was. Following opening ceremonies, we began qualification matches. We were training our members Du and Gabe to become new drivers using this event. Despite having brand new drivers, we had great success, ending in 3rd place! Because of the small size of the event, there were four alliances entering playoffs. As the 3rd place team, we were a picking alliance. Leading an alliance with team 1410 from George Washington High School and alumni from team 4499 out of Fort Collins, we defeated 1619's backup drive team in the quarterfinals and went up against 2240 from Denver in the finals. We won the first match, then they won the second match. The game was neck and neck in the final match, but 1410 collided with 2240's defense robot and ripped out a battery cable. The ruling was unclear because of a lack of robot inspection and video review, so the final was declared a tie. We led an alliance to the finals of an event for the first time, and we tied!
2019 Houston Championship
We traveled to Houston for the World Championship on April 17 through April 20th. Compared to the Colorado Regional, our robot was extraordinarily reliable throughout the competition. We had very few maintenance issues, and our pit crew ended up rather bored. Our performance on the field wasn't quite as high, but as our strategist predicted, we ended with a 5-5-0 record in 42nd place, our best performance yet at the Championship. We won our first four matches, so as a fun little bonus we were in 3rd place to start the second day of competition. With a new personal performance record for the championship in the books, we call this season a success.
2019 Colorado Regional
University of Denver hosted the Colorado Regional on March 20th through the 23rd. Day one of the Colorado Regional was a bit rough for Team 4550, but we rallied on the second day of competition. We pulled ourselves up from 50th place to 38th place and made it to playoffs as the second pick of the second seed. In playoffs, we made it to the finals, where we played defense against the first seeded alliance. We brought the match to a tiebreaker, which we lost. However, by making it to finals we won a wildcard which qualified us for the World Championship.
2019 Oklahoma Regional
Team 4550 attended the Oklahoma Regional on March 6th through 9th, where we were 8th place and were picked by the 5th seeded alliance. It was a very good competition for the team. We won seven of nine matches and made it to the quarterfinals, where we lost in a tiebreaker. Despite a loose cable compromising our earlier matches, we encountered no serious problems we were unable to fix, a very good job on the behalf of our mechanical team.