We had a great 3 days at the New England District Championship and are super excited that we qualified for the World Championships in Detroit April 25-28th! We rank 24th in New England out of 209 teams http://frc-districtrankings.firstinspires.org/2018/NE

Thank you to Newton Public Schools, Newton Schools Foundation and our amazing sponsors, mentors and team members for helping us make this possible.

No rest for the weary. This is exciting, but an expensive proposition. We don’t want to leave anyone behind who is able to join us as we can’t count on going every year. First we need $5,000 for our competition registration fee, and are hoping we can fundraise the $15,000 for a bus (2 days each way to Detroit). We will have to do a hard lean on team parents for hotels, meals and whatever we can’t raise, so we are off to put together a plan. Stay tuned! And we would love your help.

And we don’t want to miss the opportunity to tell you how you can donate: https://ligerbots.org/sponsor – or message us on Facebook or email [email protected] if you are a corporate sponsor.

A very important meeting about possible travel to the FRC World Championship in Detroit (April 24-29) will take place at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 10, at the Newton South engineering room (our regular meeting room). Each student who might want to travel to Detroit must have a parent attend this meeting.If you have a conflict, you must contact [email protected]. There will also will also be a regular team meeting from 3-9, which will continue in parallel for students once the the parent meeting starts.

The LigerBots had a great weekend at the FIRST Robotics Greater Boston Event at Revere High School where we ranked sixth in regular competition play and advanced to the finals as part of the second alliance, captained by Fusion (team 6763). We were eliminated in the final match by the first alliance, led by team 125, the Nutrons. A lovely twist of fate brought the Gryphons (team 5347) onto our alliance during the finals, after the Firebirds (team 1965), became disabled and were unable to continue play. By coincidence, our team members had helped to repair the intake on the Gryphons’ robot during qualifying matches the previous day, so they were able to continue competing. 

In addition to our success on the playing field we also took home the event’s Engineering Inspiration Award and CMO Doug moved forward as a semi-finalist for the Dean’s List Award.

The Engineering Inspiration Award celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school or organization and community. The judges were very complimentary about us, saying, “[The LigerBots exemplify] coopertition. With 30 outreach events this year alone, this team sets the standard for not only getting STEM into their local community, but worldwide. From science fairs to 3D printing, fixing school equipment to creating their own internal grant system, this team is truly an inspiration. On top of all that, this team taught us all how to be safe this year with their award-winning animation video.” We will be eligible to compete for this award at the next level April 13-14 at the New England District Championship at Boston University.

In addition to the team-wide awards, Newton North sophomore and LigerBots CMO Douglas was named a Dean’s List Award semi-finalist. The Dean’s List Award celebrates outstanding student leaders whose passion for and effectiveness at attaining FIRST ideals is exemplary. Doug, and Coach Igor, who was advanced as a Woodie Flowers semi-finalist at the North Shore Event, are eligible to be finalists in their award categories at the District Championship.

We had special guests with us in the stands during the tournament–representatives of an ed-tech startup in China who are looking at FIRST as a model for bringing project-based learning concepts to Shanghai. Our team members who were fluent in Mandarin conversed with our guests and explained the game to them.

As soon as the Greater Boston competition was over, members of the LigerBots Chairman’s Award group visited the Day Dragons, a Newton FIRST LEGO League team we have been mentoring, which is based at Day Middle School. Our team members acted as guest judges, listening and giving advice to the Day Dragons as they practiced their presentation for the upcoming FLL World Championship in Detroit. It was a great bonding experience for us all, and the Day Dragons even asked for the LigerBots’ autographs!

The LigerBots qualify for the New England District Championships at Boston University next weekend by virtue of our robot’s success on the Power Up playing field and our garnering of the Engineering Inspiration, Finalist and Imagery awards at district-level events.

The New England District Championship, like all FRC events, is free and open to the public and will be live streamed on The Blue Alliance. All LigerBots supporters are invited to sit and cheer with the team in the stands and be escorted by a LigerBot on a “pit tour” of all the competing FRC robots.

If all goes well at the District Championship the team will qualify for the FRC World Championship in Detroit, on April 25-28, and will immediately need to raise the $5,000 competition fee and significant dollars for travel expenses. The LigerBots raise all of their own funds from corporate sponsors and individual donors. If you’d like to help the team, you can donate via Paypal, or visit the sponsor page of our website, at https://ligerbots.org/sponsor, which also contains information about donating via check.

On April 7 from 10:30 a.m. to about 7:00 p.m. and April 8 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., the LigerBots will compete with our robot, “Chronos,” in the Greater Boston District Event at Revere High School, 101 School. St., Revere, MA 02151. The event is free and open to the public and will be live streamed here or here.  All of our supporters are invited to come to sit and cheer with us in the stands and be escorted by a LigerBot on a “pit tour” of all the competing FRC robots.

Coming out of our North Shore District event the LigerBots finished in the top ten, and participated in the quarterfinal matches. We have spent the last two weeks revamping our strategy and robot, so next time we hope to be number one!

The first change we are working on is adding climbing ramps! In the end stage of the match, alliances are given a chance to earn extra points by lifting robots at least a foot into the air. A newly-formed ramps group has been prototyping and testing various strategies all week. Now that we have a design, the group is fabricating the final products. Soon we will attach the ramps and do some field tests to get them competition ready!

In order to guarantee a top tier spot in competition, the team is also working on improvements to our autonomous mode. For the first fifteen seconds of a match, all the robots run automatically, and we want to be able to maximize those seconds to earn as many points as possible. Our programming group has been tweaking and testing new code for Chronos.

We also are improving our public speaking skills. Our Chairman’s Award group continues to practice its presentation for judges, and all team members are practicing how to answer technical questions about Chronos for judges and the public.

Our next competition is April 7 and 8 at Revere High School. Please join us in the arena to cheer on the LigerBots, or watch us compete live on  Twitch.