News & Events

The Paladins were proud to be a part of the FTC Scrimmage held at the Adelaide Showgrounds and generously run by the RoboRoos (Student Robotics Club of South Australia).

As our first in-person FTC event, every member of the team felt the true energy and excitement of FIRST all the way from the start!

With not a lot of work having been done on our robot Joyeuse over the last few months due to COVID, there were many late nights over the past week, working hard to get everything together. We were faced with many challenges, from autonomous not quite working, to CAD software malfunctions, however, were happy to show up with a decent robot - our aim was not to win - but to be part of the event, meet other teams, and have fun.

Progressing through the qualifiers on the day was quite the experience. Challenging would be the perfect word to describe it! When autonomous would not quite work how we wanted, we’d have to very quickly identify and fix the issue(s) in the code. Our pit team worked together so well and was very efficient at this! While one person would be at a laptop working on code, another would be plugging the robot in to load the latest software, and yet another person would be squaring the robot up along the start line, ready to go - it felt like we were a Formula 1 pit crew!

Many goals (and flat batteries…) later, and it came time for the final rounds. In third place, at the time, we were chosen, alongside the team from Gleeson College, to be alliance partners with one of the RoboRoos teams. After a couple of good matches with our red alliance partners, it came down to the final round, which we played with the Gleeson team. Rather unsure of how we would go since we had made some very last minute changes to our code (autonomous and shooter control), our alliance managed to score a whopping 101 points, securing us as champions of the scrimmage!

We would like to thank every team in attendance, as well as all the volunteers for their hard work and for letting us experience a fantastic day of robots, fun and gracious professionalism WOO! A special mention must also go to our coach, Mrs O’Malley for welcoming us into the world of FIRST and always guiding us with her vast experience to do our best, and to our fantastic mentor Shaun, who has been with us since day one, and is always there when things get tough.

We can’t wait to be part of future FIRST events and are particularly excited for the First Tech Challenge Kick-Off, which we will be holding on Sunday, 19th September - see you there!

By Caleb, Team Captain