The Kinetic Knights are second in the world!

This past week our Knights travelled to St. Louis, Missouri to compete in the FIRST® World Championship. After sitting for 15 hours on a bus, we were happy to finally get a chance to unload our equipment and set up our pit. Although we have already attended three tournaments this season, nothing would have prepared us for the 5 countries and over 300 teams that were present at the Worlds.

While our pit crew set up on Wednesday evening, some other members of our team attended conferences to learn how to be successful in FIRST®. With our robot ready to go, Team 781 was finally ready to compete in our first World Championship since 2003. On Thursday morning we competed in a few practice matches before beginning the qualification matches that afternoon.

After taking a break from competition to attend our first RoboProm, the Kinetic Knights came back ready to go on Friday. We played much better in these qualification matches, moving us up to 26th in the rankings. That evening some of our team members concentrated on generating a pick list in hopes of making alliance selections, while others attended the FIRST® Black Eyed Peas concert. The organizers of the Championship truly did a remarkable job in making this a memorable experience.

Team 781 won our final qualification match on Saturday putting us in 34th position before the alliance selections. For complete rankings see here. Of the 84 teams in the Archimedes division, only 24 would qualify for the elimination rounds. We were forced to watch nervously as 23 teams were selected before the #1 ranked alliance decided to take a chance on the little team from Canada. We appreciate our alliance partners Team 2016 (The Mighty Monkey Wrenches) from Ewing, New Jersey and Team 177 (Bobcat Robotics) from South Windsor, Connecticut for being the best teammates we could hope for.

Since Team 177 had won their division for the past five years at the World Championship, we were hoping we wouldn't let them down. As the second pick on our alliance, we were asked to play defense in the elimination rounds. Even though we had never played defense before, our driver Sven and operator Stewart were more than ready for the task. In a simply outstanding demonstration of robot driving Sven shut down our opponents in the quarters and semis, launching our alliance into the Archimedes division finals. Riding a surge of momentum, we closed out the #3 ranked alliance in straight matches with scores of 115-59 and 114-109 to become the Archimedes Division Champions. For more results see here.

The winners of the four divisions were then invited to the Einstein field to compete for the FIRST® World Championship. Of the 12 teams competing on the Einstein field we were proud to represent Canada along with our friends from Niagara Falls, Team 1503 (Spartonics). In our Einstein semifinal we were pitted against an impressive alliance representing the Curie division. With thousands of FIRST® fans from around the world watching, Teams 2016, 177 and 781 defeated the Curie champions in straight matches with scores of 112-107 and 130-97, sending us to the finals of the world.

Of 2000 teams registered to compete in the world this year, only 6 teams make the finals and we are extremely proud to be one of them. In the Einstein finals we squared off against the Galileo champions, featuring Hall of Fame Teams 111 (WildStang) and 254 (The Cheesy Poofs) as well as Team 973 (Greybots). Our alliance fought valiantly; however, it was not meant to be as our robot finally succumbed to all of the damage accumulated over four competitions. Forced to play 2 against 3, our partners 2016 and 177 competed admirably before our alliance was finally defeated. Congratulations to the new World Champions 111, 254 and 973, you truly deserve this win and you have served as role models for every team in FIRST®.

Although we came up short in the end, the Kinetic Knights have gone far beyond anything we could have imagined at the beginning of this season. Special mention goes out to our driver Sven, operator Stewart, human player James and coach Matt who were all fantastic throughout the season and were major contributors to our team's success. Here are some of our accomplishments for the year:

• 2 Website Awards
• Engineering Excellence Award (Team 781's first robot technical award)
• Greater Toronto West Regional Champions
• Buckeye Regional Finalists
• Archimedes Division Champions
• FIRST® World Championship Finalists