2023

Season Press Releases

IgKnighters at Finger Lakes Regional Qualifier 2023

Our student-built competition robot “Scorpion” rolled into RIT this past week with eyes on a golden ticket for FIRST Championship 2023. Only the top teams qualify to advance, and McQuaid’s IgKnighters are always in contention.

This year, for FIRST Charged Up sponsored by Qualcomm, the IgKnighters decided to expand our competition experience by attending three qualifying tournaments. In Florida, we advanced all the way to the quarterfinals before stumbling due to a bumper malfunction. “Scorpion” ended the run in the top ten of 34 teams from around the country and even some from overseas.

Last week, on our home field, at RIT, the team also advanced quite far against even more competition, 55 teams including robots from Chinese Taipei and Quebec! The IgKnighters drove “Scorpion” to many victories over the two-day tournament, holding a record of 8-2-0 at the end of qualifying rounds. In the playoff rounds, we built an alliance with The Trojanators from North Catholic High School in Cranberry Township, PA, and Devil Tech from Victor High School in Victor, NY. Our alliance went far last Saturday, but not far enough to grab that golden ticket.

“Scorpion” is a swerve-drive, aluminum frame, 85 pound speedster with an articulated arm and pincers designed for grabbing small rubber traffic cones and inflated cubes, the game pieces required to score in this year’s Charged Up game. It was built almost entirely in-house by a dedicated team of students and mentors. “Scorpion” is known for running up big autonomous scores (driving with no driver) and has many of its important functions pre-coded into the driver controls, increasing the opportunities to score without additional human control needed.

The IgKnighters will press “Scorpion” into service once more this month, at the Buckeye Regional Qualifier in Cleveland, OH. With some luck and a lot of skill, the IgKnighters will not see Cleveland as our final event of the year…

Major Sponsors of the IgKnighters include McQuaid Jesuit, Xerox, Big Dog 3D Printing and

Reiber Precision Machine. For more information on the team and their season, visit

www.igknighters.org.

IgKnighters at South Florida Regional Qualifier 2023

The McQuaid Jesuit Robotics team, the IgKnighters, competed in the South Florida Regional Tournament in Palm Beach on March 3rd and 4th. The team finished 5th of 34 teams in qualification matches. Then, they captained the third place alliance in the elimination rounds. In this first event of the 2023 Charged Up season, the IgKnighters faced immediate challenges before they took the field. “Scorpion,” the robot, did make it to Florida, along with a contingent of 50 IgKnighters, mentors, and parents. However, all spare parts and tools never made it to the tournament!

The first competition day was pretty fun. We went 5-2 the first day and ended in 5th place out of 36 other teams. This is the highest we have been ranked in a very long time. We had many mechanical issues we had to sort out between matches like changing the main arm drive belt. This took 30 minutes on top of other unforeseen mechanical issues. In these cases, the spares we had in the crate would have been no help. In the last couple matches of the day something crazy happened. Our driver was able to use the rules to his advantage and score 70 points for us purely off penalties, which not only set a new high score, but also a world record for 20 minutes. Then it happened again and we set a new high score at the event. We went back to the hotel and had a scouting meeting, where we decided who we wanted to pick and play with in our alliance for the second half of Saturday's competition.

The second day of competition was split into two parts. First we had to finish our qualification matches, and then we would break for lunch and pick alliance partners. We ended up staying in 5th throughout the second day, only dropping two matches, one because our battery disconnected at the start. We went into the alliance selection with OK odds of winning. We ended up picking team 11, out of New Jersey, and then team 8817 out of Florida.

In the playoffs, the IgKnighters upset the #3 seed, finally bowing out in the semi finals finishing 3rd out of 8 alliances. It was arguably one of their most successful showings since before the pandemic. Overcoming no spare parts or tools, the team amassed the two top scores of the tournament, at 164 and 161 points in single matches, and were one of only 3 alliances to balance three robots on the power cell during the End Game.

The IgKnighters don’t have time to celebrate however. They will participate at the Finger Lakes Regional at RIT’s Gordon Fieldhouse on March 17th and 18th and the Buckeye Regional in Cleveland on March 31st and April 1st.

Major Sponsors of the IgKnighters include McQuaid Jesuit, Xerox, Big Dog 3D Printing and Reiber Precision Machine. For more information on the team and their season, visit www.igknighters.org.

2022

Season Recap in the Cauldron 2022 Spring Issue

IgKnighters Put Together Strong Season

Between January and March, McQuaid Jesuit’s FIRST® Robotics team, the IgKnighters, tirelessly worked to prototype, design, CAD (computer-aided design), build, test, and rebuild an amazing little robot named “Lance.” Lance was built entirely in-house; from the 3-D printed parts and ball shooter to the aluminum frame milled on a Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) mill. The team of more than 20 students worked closely with veteran mentors to strategize over how to win the most points, and how to solve the many problems that came up along the way. Lance had two primary goals: Collect balls from the floor and shoot them into a seven-foot-high goal and then navigate to an inclined set of four rungs to climb as high as possible. The IgKnighters quickly became infamous in competition for their ability to get Lance climbing to the highest rung in every match, where many teams could only climb to the first or second rung. The team’s first competition was at the Finger Lakes Regional, March 6-12, on the campus of RIT. Having still not completely worked out the kinks in Lance’s design, the little robot and the drive team gave it their all throughout the competition. Although the IgKnighters weren’t ranked very high, they still were selected for an alliance in the elimination round due to the robot’s ability to climb.

Playing in the fifth seeded alliance with the team from Great Neck (New York) South High School and Lockport (New York) High School, the IgKnighters upset the fourth seeded alliance in the quarterfinals before falling in the semifinals to the eventual champions in a hard-fought series that went the full three rounds.

FIRST has a philosophy of “Gracious Professionalism,” which stresses being serious competitors but also showing excellent sportsmanship. McQuaid was recognized with the Gracious Professionalism Award based on the team’s track record of helping other schools with machining parts, lending motors, giving code advice, and consistently acting in a manner that all Knights can look up to.

The IgKnighters robot, Lance, became infamous for its ability to climb to the highest rung during competition, where many teams could only climb to the first or second rung.

The team’s next competition was at the Buckeye Regional, March 23-26, on the campus of Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio. The IgKnighters went to Ohio with an improved robot and the confidence to compete against some of the best robots in the northeast. Lance performed almost flawlessly throughout the qualification matches as the IgKnighters placed 11th in the 60-team field. The top teams at the event took notice, since at the end of qualifications, the analytics showed the IgKnighters robot to be one of the best at the tournament. This led them to be the second overall pick for a spot in the elimination rounds. With their alliance captain, Team Beak Squad from Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy and The Botcats from Grandview Heights (Ohio) High School, they began their pursuit of a regional championship.

The alliance made quick work of its opponents in the quarterfinals and semifinals. The showdown in the finals, best of three, was against the very familiar robots from Spencerport and Churchville-Chili with their partner Ozone Robotics from Lewis Center, Ohio. The first round was a well-fought affair with the IgKnighters getting off to a great start. However, a breakdown at the end prevented Lance from completing the end game assignment, which proved to be just enough to hand victory to the other alliance. The pit crew frantically worked on the robot during a timeout and had Lance up and running again. With much confidence, the IgKnighters went into the second round, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Along with being a finalist at the Buckeye Regional, the IgKnighters won a Creativity Award sponsored by Rockwell Automation. The Creativity Award was given for the innovative and creative way in which the IgKnighters used automation to accomplish one of the goals of the game.

The mission of FIRST® is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders and innovators through mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills and inspire innovation and foster well-rounded life capabilities, including self-confidence, communication, and leadership

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