This article was updated August 3.
It was a grueling match this past Saturday, with the Houston and St. Louis Alliances going head to head to see who would come out on top in the Festival of Champions. At first, Houston was in the lead going up two matches in a best of three, but it wasn’t over yet. The St. Louis Alliance was able to come back and, in the unlikeliest of developments, won the next three matches in a row to win the tournament. The St. Louis Alliance was a group of different teams from that division’s championship: the 254 Cheesy Poofs, 2767 Stryke Force, 862 Lightning Robotics, and 1676 Pascack Pioneers.
Check out this playlist containing the five head-to-head matches between the St. Louis and Houston Alliances. The video below is of the winner-take-all fifth match which determined the winner of the Festival of Champions:
Original Story published on July 28, 2017
The winners have been determined, and the top FIRST Robotic teams from across the country are heading to New Hampshire this weekend to participate in the annual Festival of Champions. Appropriately, the Granite State was the location of the very first Festival of Champions 25 years ago.
This year’s competition was inspired by the steam power era. The FIRST STEAMworks matches had two alliances battling head-to-head to build up as much “steam pressure” as possible; they collected “fuel,” or balls, to shoot into a boiler. Three individual teams comprise an alliance, and the balls were collected and distributed by the robots designed by each team. There were two entry slots in the boiler and the balls shot into the boiler-produced steam. The higher, harder-to-reach entry slot produced more pressure.
The second obstacle of the game was to complete the airship. Alliances used the robots to deliver parts of the airship to their teammates. Team members on the airship collected the gear parts to complete the rotor assemblies. For the first 15 seconds of each match the robots were self-driven, guiding themselves around the course. During the remaining time of the three-minute match, the team operators controlled the robots. There were four rotor assemblies per airship. The team with the most pressure and the most completed functioning airship won the match.
There were two championship rounds held in Houston and St. Louis. The winners of each championship are below:
Representing Houston
- 973, Greybots, Alliance Captain, from Atascadero, Calif.
- 1011, CRUSH, from Tuscon, Ariz.
- 4188, Columbus Space Program, from Columbus, Ga.
- 5499, Bay Orangutans, from Berkeley, Calif.
Representing St. Louis
- 2767, Stryke Force, Alliance Captain, from Kalamazoo, Mich.
- 254, The Cheesy Poofs, from San Jose, Calif.
- 862, Lightning Robotics, from Canton, Mich.
- 1676, The Pascack Pioneers, from Montvale, N.J.
They will be joined in New Hampshire by the 2017 Chairman’s Award Winning Teams, 3132, Thunder Down Under, from Sydney, Australia, and 2614, MARS, from Morgantown, W.V., as guests of honor. The Festival of Champions will be webcast live; it takes place 10:30 a.m Eastern Standard Time this Saturday, July 28th. The championship will be broadcast here. You can also stay updated via social media, taking part in the #FIRSTFestivalofChamps conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
