Nemesis Lands Another Successful Season in Houston
The FIRST World Championships, held in Houston this year, served as one of the most successful ever for the team. The 3-day event was split into 6 divisions, each with 65-66 teams. Nemesis was assigned to the Galileo division, a division filled with great teams such as the 4 time world champion Cheesy Poofs, along with many other excellent teams such as 1619, and 118. Nemesis’ competition started quickly, participating in match one in an alliance with teams 2959, and 2481. The match was hard fought, and saw Nemesis experience connection issues. Luckily, our fellow alliance partners made sure to pick up the slack, and fought for a brilliant 120-31 victory for Nemesis. The second match saw Nemesis narrowly fall 128-95 in a match filled with strong offense. We were still hopeful for more success through the competition, as we were slated for more games throughout the day
The third match was one we had been looking forward to, seeing us combine with teams 254 and 1771. Unfortunately, we had another flare up of our disconnection issues. Our teammates made large numbers of shots and after the dust cleared, we won our third game 165-131, setting the division high score to that point. Our robot only continued to improve as the day moved on, and we found ourselves finishing the day at 4 wins and 2 losses, being ranked in the mid 20’s going into another day of hard fought qualifying matches.
Nemesis resumed our efforts on day 2 in match 87, a match which turned out to be our closest in the competition, decided by a narrow margin of 3 points. Nemesis was on the losing side, falling to 4-3 on the competition. Nemesis followed the game up with 3 straight wins to finish at a record of 7-3, and ranked at the 11 seed. Unlike previous competitions though, world championships held the awards ceremony after the second day instead of the third, making it before the tournament. As we advanced through all of the awards, tensions rose. Nemesis hadn’t won an award at worlds since 2015 and the team couldn’t have been more hopeful now for an award. Eventually the announcers got to the entrepreneurship award. They advanced through the announcement line by line, going over our long term business plan, our international outreach, and our local outreach. At each passing line the team became more optimistic that the award could be coming our way. “The Award goes to…Nemesis 2590!” Our team was elated, we had won a prestigious award that we had been pursuing since our last award in 2015. Our representatives received the award, and we all celebrated the wonderful accomplishment that we had achieved. We have worked hard for years on expanding outreach efforts, advancing our business plans, and other major initiatives to reach a point where we qualify for this award.Winning the award was a great moment for this team, especially for our outgoing seniors who lost 2 competition seasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With this win, Nemesis can officially say, we have the most entrepreneurship awards of any FIRST team, a total of 15 with 3 at worlds.
We all looked forward to what we might see on the third and final day of competition, there were so many possibilities at play. Would we be captain? Would we be picked and to what alliance? Our questions would be answered in the early morning of day 3.
The alliance selection process began with team 1619, Up-a-Creek robotics, having the first pick in the draft. They selected team 254, The Cheesy Poofs, as they prepared to embark on what they hoped would be a long journey in the tournament. The second alliance captain was team 1732, the Hilltoppers. They selected team 118, The Robonauts, to join them on their journey through the tournament. Only 1 more team needed to be selected who were alliance captains, and we would join the group of 8 captains. Surprisingly, this never occurred. The first round of picks went by and the second round began. Nemesis was selected by team 2586, and graciously accepted. Nemesis joined an alliance that included 2586, 1023, 2590, and 5114. Nemesis had to begin preparing for our round 1 matchup, attempting to stage an upset in a matchup pitting us against the 2 seed alliance.
After a break spent meticulously strategizing with our alliance partners, the quarterfinals began. Our first quarterfinal was the 4th match, and the tension was rising. Our alliance worked as hard as ever, keeping the match close the whole way through. In the end, Nemesis lost by 15 points, now needing to win 2 straight matches to advance. As we went through the second set, the pressure set in. We would need to perform perfectly to win this matchup. The match began, and our shooting was perfect. We weren’t missing a single shot. We just managed to get off our climb, winning by a mere 6 points. A game 3 would be played. Two tiebreaker matches were played, and we were the last of the two. Our alliance was performing perfectly, each person playing their role. 2586 played shutdown defense, Nemesis played our sharpshooting and did our consistent traversal climb, while 1023 shot through the very end. We won by a margin of an insane 31 points, sending us into the semifinals against teams 1756, 846, and 3476. The team was elated. Cheers rained down from the stands as we celebrated our upset victory over the 2 seed alliances in the division.
The first match was the second semi final, with the number 1 seed team winning by a margin of more than 40 points. Then, it was our match. We shot proficiently and with the stifling defense from team 2586, the game was the closest we had ever seen. Unfortunately, we missed by a small margin of only 9 points. In the third semifinal, the number 1 seed team advanced by 13 points, punching their ticket into the finals for the Galileo division. Our second semifinal came around, and the environment was tense. The match began and all of the robots ran their autonomous routines. We were narrowly losing after the initial stage, and we began the teleop period. The deficit was quickly made up as we approached the endgame. As we finished our climb, the dust was beginning to settle. We lost narrowly, by a margin of only 4 points, ending our run at worlds.
Our team was extremely grateful for the opportunities to compete at worlds. The team has worked hard to get there with decisive wins in district and regional competitions and learned a lot along the way. We have now returned with an entrepreneurship victory, many lessons learned and having one of the most successful runs a Nemesis robot has ever had. We are so proud of what the team has accomplished after nearly two years’ absence of in-person competitions. We look forward to another great season for 2022-23.