Author: Scott Rippetoe

Texas Torque was honored to host the Week 5 Lone Star North Regional at College Park High School this past weekend. We had 33 teams from Florida to Mexico to Turkey compete to become the winning alliance. Texas Torque spent the practice day making mechanical changes to our robot, adding on a new floor gear intake. During the qualification matches, Texas Torque played very well, ending with a 9-2 win/loss record and a 1.90 ranking score, placing us 2nd.

During alliance selections, we allied with 2992 S.S. Prometheus, 4295 Hudson Robotics, and later, 6363 Ricebird Robotics. We had a great run, but lost in Semifinals to a great 3rd seeded alliance (who went on to win the regional!). We would like to congratulate 3284 Camdenton 4H LASER, 5842 Royal Robotics, and 6547 Flaming Metal Robotics on their regional win! Serious props to our mentee team Flaming Metal Robotics – they won their first and only regional of their rookie year!

During the awards ceremony, Texas Torque took home the Quality Award, and our own Ithza Lopez was chosen as a Dean’s List Finalist! Also, a HUGE congratulations to our friends 2881 Lady Cans for winning their first Chairman’s Award!!!

We would also like to give a huge thanks to the student, parent and mentor volunteers that helped our first ever regional run so smoothly! We’re looking forward to hosting more in our new lab these coming years.

Texas Torque participated in the Week 3 Lone Star Central Regional this past weekend, and suffice it to say that this regional was one for the books. Along with 40 other teams, Texas Torque competed at Strake Jesuit College Prep for the chance to take home the regional win.

After a great round of practice matches, Texas Torque emerged from the qualification rounds with a 9-1 win-lose record and the first 4-rotor match of the regional and state. We finished ranked 2nd after team 118, the Robonauts. At alliance selection, the Torqueonauts were revived after six years when Texas Torque was the first pick of 118’s 1st seed alliance. Joining our alliance as the 3rd bot was team 5526 tCATs from Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico.

With the help of our talented alliance partners, we were able to get multiple 100+ point autonomous periods and 300+ final match scores. We faced some fierce competition throughout the elimination rounds, but at the end of the day we were able to win the regional! This was the first time since 2013 that Texas Torque has won a regional, so needless to say the team was ecstatic!

More good news came during the awards ceremony, when Texas Torque was also selected as the Chairman’s Award winners! This is our 3rd Chairman’s Award in four years, and the start of a now two-year streak of winning Chairman’s. This was also the first time in Texas Torque history that we came home from a competition with 2 blue banners! You can watch our 2017 Chairman’s Video here.

We would like to thank our alliance partners 118 Robonauts and 5526 tCATs and congratulate the finalist alliance of 3847 Spectrum, 5829 AwtyBots and 3997 Screaming Chickens, who all qualified to attend the World Championship! We would also like to congratulate 5526 tCATs on winning the Engineering Inspiration Award!

We look forward to hosting (and competing in) the Lone Star North Regional at College Park High School in Week 5!

At our week 1 regional, the Hub City regional,  Texas Torque competed with 45 other teams coming from across the USA and beyond, including Turkey, and Mexico. Members of Texas Torque were excited to attend a week 1 regional of FIRST Steamworks.

After scouting a series of matches and intense game plays, we were able to get the highest score in qualification matches and a 10-1 win-lose record. We were the the 2nd seed alliance captain, and picked 3847 Spectrum and 159 Alpine Robotics.

Elimination matches were tough, but we made it to the finals with our great alliance members! The regional was a great start to our season, since we also won the Entrepreneurship Award! With the new implementation of one free wildcard per regional, we were able to qualify for the FIRST World Championship held in downtown Houston!!

Thanks again to our awesome alliance partners, 3847 Spectrum and 159 Alpine Robotics! Congratulations to the winners, 1817 RoboRaiders, 935 RaileRobotics, and 4063 TriKzR4Kidz! Also, congratulations to team 3847 Spectrum for winning Engineering Inspiration, and team 624 CRyptonite for winning Chairman’s Award!

We are extremely grateful to compete in Hub City Regional with great teams, and we look forward to meeting more in our next regional!!