By Liam Houston — TORC student member

Oxford High School’s FIRST Robotics Competition team, Team 2137 TORC (The Oxford Robo Cats) competed and won the with their robot and took the Excellence in Engineering award at the FIRST in Michigan Alpena District Event held at Alpena High School this past weekend.

TORC placed second in the qualification matches and nearly went undefeated, with a record of 11 wins and only 1 loss. For eliminations, TORC joined the first place team, Team 2075 Enigma Robotics, from Grand Rapids and the 18th seed team, Team 6573 Alanson Viking Robotics, from Alanson to form the first alliance. In quarter and semifinals, their alliance remained undefeated with only one close match that had to be decided by a tie breaker.

Through three close finals matches, facing exceptional opposition from the third alliance, consisting of Team 3536 Electro Eagles from Hartland, Team 862 Lightning Robotics from Canton and Team 7171 Wolverines from Wolverine, they won the event.

Their win in Alpena comes after being eliminated in the semifinal matches at the prior competition in Belleville two weeks ago.

“We did amazing,” said Caity Hopman, a student and human player for the team. “We persevered through most of the problems we had during our first competition.”

Throughout the competition, TORC also assisted many teams with their robots including Team 7171, who made it all the way to the finals to face against them. “This fact, is what separates FIRST robotics from every other event/competition/tournament, it is about the process, the ethos of ‘gracious professionalism’ that when we go to compete, we not only work hard to be the best we can be, but work harder to help the other teams at the competition to be their best too,” said team electrical and programming mentor Scott McBride.

The team also won the Excellence in Engineering Award sponsored by Delphi, which celebrates a team for building a robot with an elegant and advantageous machine feature that help it perform the challenges of the game.

TORC has now qualified to move on to state competition through both their prior win of the Chairman’s Award at the prior competition in Belleville and for the performance of the robot at Alpena. They are also one of only two teams in the state already qualified to attend the FIRST Championship in Detroit through their win of the Engineering Inspiration Award at last year’s championship.