Over the weekend on Feb. 22-23, all three FTC robotics teams from the school — the Bettafish and the Cuttlefish in the Gold Division and the Jellyfish in the Silicon Division — faced off against many world-class teams in the NorCal Regional FTC Championships at Newark Memorial High School. The Bettafish finished ranked 10th, the Jellyfish were division semifinalists and the Cuttlefish were Innovate Award winners and qualified to the World Championships as tournament finalists.
Over February break in the days leading up to competition weekend, teams spent over nine hours per day finalizing and tuning their robots as preparation for the challenging matches ahead. Here are the latest developments.
Cuttlefish clinch Worlds advancement slot as Tournament Finalists
After going 6-0 in qualification matches and playing the tournament’s second highest-scoring match, Cuttlefish, a team of 14 members, ranked first in the Gold Division. Battling with multiple strong contending teams, Cuttlefish made a stressful, last-minute switch to choose longtime friend Team 16236 Juice — ranked 19th with a 2-4 qualification match record — as their alliance partner to head into the elimination rounds, gambling on the trust that Juice’s robot was fixed.
The alliance lost their first elimination match by one point and had to delay a 2-minute match for over 20 minutes to crimp broken wires. Despite these setbacks, the alliance climbed back up through the losing bracket, setting event highscores as they played. They eventually won the two rematches against their first opponent, winning the Gold Division. Cuttlefish and Juice scored a 380-point tie in the first finals match against the winning alliances of the Silicon division, composed of Team 19862 Mecha Mantises and Team 14259 Turbo V8, but lost the last two close matches.
The Cuttlefish also took home the Innovate Award sponsored by RTX, given to the team that judges believe had the most innovative and creative robot design solution.
“It was the best competition I’ve been to — usually a major part of the robot breaks, but this time it didn’t,” said senior Ethan Yang, the hardware lead. “We didn’t have to have any careless failures like [disconnections], so we were able to play our best.”
Leading up to the day of matches, members prepared by making sure they were not only applying temporary fixes to problems but also trying to find more permanent solutions. Instead of repairing something by replacing it, he said the team changed their approach toward addressing the issues and trying new things until every single problem was worked out — simply having a working robot that was consistent throughout the entire day improved their performance.
Additionally, Yang said having a pit crew that checked over the robot’s functionality before each match was crucial to success.
“It’s like the Formula One drivers: we have all our hardware members get together to check literally every problem that we’ve faced or potential issues that could cause a massive failure in our robot, and [they] make sure that doesn’t happen,” he said. “And as a [robot] driver, it was really nice having the pit crew take care of everything that we had because it just meant less stress for me.”
With relatively higher numbers of sophomores and juniors with less experience in comparison to past years, Yang said that the team didn’t have as much technical prowess. Unlike past seasons, there was no redesign or major changes made to the robot prior to Regionals, and the Cuttlefish focused on refining their robot to make it more reliable and achieve its full potential. While they could have tried for a near flawless design, they instead targeted perfecting the execution of a “good-enough” design: “If you redesign, you’re starting at square one again.”
Yang said the competition was a roller coaster of emotions.
“We went undefeated; we were pretty lucky with our matches, and then we picked the 19th seed, and then we lost the first one. And I was panicking like, ‘Oh my gosh, this was a horrible choice.’ Then we had to win all of them back up… and then we tied [finals],” he said. “We could have won — it was pretty close either way. But that was very exciting. It would have been really boring if we just won all our matches.”
In preparation for the World Championships, which will take place on April 15-19 in Houston, the Cuttlefish plan to optimize the speed and consistency of their robot while also refining their presentation skills, which would make them eligible for additional judged awards.
Bettafish rank 10th in Gold Division
The Bettafish qualified for Regionals on Feb. 2 at a competition at Ida Jew Academy Valle Vista Elementary (IJAVVE). They were the Finalist Alliance Pick. At IJAVVE, they also won the Inspire Award, the highest honor awarded to an FTC team demonstrating strong technical design and impactful community outreach.
Sophomore Katie Yang, the hardware lead for the Bettafish, said, “I’m tremendously proud that we made it to Regionals. What makes it even more impressive is that we’re a rookie team with only two veterans and nine rookies, some with no robotics experience at all.”
Later, at Regionals, the Bettafish went 3-3 during their qualification matches, with several 300+ match scores and a best Offensive Power Ranking (OPR) in the top 97.2% of matches. Although they weren’t selected by an alliance captain for the playoffs, Bettafish concluded the qualification matches ranked 10th out of 24 teams in the Gold Division, with their highest scoring match of 310 points earning them the 20th highest score out of 94 matches.
Yang said the team of 11 members spent intense work sessions to prepare their robot to be reliable and consistent in order to withstand the rough confrontations in gameplay.
“We focused on optimization rather than major changes to our robot. I’m most proud of how robust and reliable our robot was,” she said. “In our first qualifier, we had a lot of issues with our robot breaking, which was really disheartening, but we worked incredibly hard to build something that wouldn’t fail under pressure.”
However, Yang believed that Bettafish could have practiced more with other teams beforehand to be more familiar with the competition. The dynamic of real matches was quite different from solo practice sessions, she said, so extra experience would have helped her team adapt more quickly.
“The fact that we not only built a competitive robot but also grew so much as a team in such a short time is honestly amazing,” Yang said. “As the hardware lead, seeing everyone’s growth in knowledge and how we’ve come together as a team makes me incredibly proud.”
The Bettafish drive team plays in an alliance with Juice during the qualification matches.
Jellyfish advance to Silicon Division Semifinals
The Jellyfish also qualified at IJAVVE as the Winning Alliance Captain (ranked first) with the fifth best OPR in NorCal at the time, so the team had high expectations for the games ahead.
At the Regionals tournament at Newark High, an unlucky match schedule — one pitting them against their division’s top teams in several matches— left them at a 2-4 record following qualification matches, ranking in 17th place. However, their Best OPR ranked in the top 97.8% of matches and they were chosen by Team 16026 Alphabots as the third seed alliance in the Silicon Division. The alliance lost their first elimination match but fought through three additional matches in the losing bracket, finishing as division semifinalists.
The Jellyfish drive team scouts the field ahead of their match.
As a member of the software subteam, freshman Vikram Janakiraman felt that the Jellyfish robot’s simple design made controlling and maneuvering easier, both in terms of autonomous control and human drivers.
The Jellyfish robot achieves a Level 3 Hang on the highest bar, earning them 30 points.
Heading into the offseason, Janakiraman said he already has plans to explore software elements like command-based libraries, camera vision and custom path following, while the hardware team may work on advanced mechanisms to refine skills and experiment with potential designs for next year’s new challenge.
Next year, Janakiraman hopes his team of 15 members can qualify for Regionals from their first qualifier tournament and advance to finals in their division. Nevertheless, he felt that for a team that started the season with many inexperienced members, Jellyfish still performed very well.
“I’m proud of our team’s success while being a relatively rookie team with mostly 10th and 9th graders, [including] many freshmen new to FTC,” Janakiraman said.
