On October 30, the Moravian Academy Robotics Team “The Dark Byte” took second place in an off-season FIRST Robotics Competition Event at Wissahickon High School in Ambler, PA.

The event, entitled Ramp Riot, was a one-day competition where robots from 15 teams competed in the Spring 2020 FIRST Robotics season game, Infinite Recharge. 

Attending the event were Michael Baron ‘22 (Programmer, Driver), Kaia Reenok ‘22 (Build Team, Safety Captain), Ethan Krupka ‘23 (Build Team, Driver), and Emma Derby ‘24 (Build Team) along with faculty mentors Dr. Jeff Lawlis and Lara Cesco-Cancian.

FIRST events consist of three parts: Qualification matches, Alliance Selection, and the Playoff Tournament. During the first half of the day, The Dark Byte (Team 5490) played the Infinite Recharge game six times with a different set of partners and opponents each match. During these qualification matches, the team was ranked based on a variety of factors, including on win-loss ratio and total points scored. By the end of the qualification matches, The Dark Byte had a 4-2 win loss ratio and was ranked fifth out of fifteen teams. The top five teams were then announced and became alliance captains for the alliance selection process.

The Dark Byte chose Michael Baron ‘22 to represent our team during alliance selection. Using a snake draft, each alliance captain picked two other teams to join their alliance for the playoff tournament. The Dark Byte Selected Team 3314, the Mechanical Mustangs from Clifton, NJ and Team 834, the SparTechs from Southern Lehigh High School. Alliances were given six minutes to strategize before the playoff tournament began. Each alliance then played the four other alliances in a round robin format to determine which two alliances would move on to the finals. After all ten of those matches, The Dark Byte’s alliance was in the top two and moved on to the final round.

In the finals, the top two teams play for the best of three matches. After losing the first match, the alliance developed a new strategy and won the second match but was hit hard with some mechanical failures and unfortunately lost the final match to Alliance 1. The winning alliance consisted of Team 2539, the Krypton Cougars, Team 316, the Lunatecs, and Team 1712, Dawga. The Dark Byte is ecstatic to have earned second place at Ramp Riot and cannot wait to see what the 2022 season will bring.

The Dark Byte would like to thank all of the Team 5490 alumni from the class of 2020 and 2021 who helped build the Infinite Recharge robot, Grace Burcaw ‘22 (Build Team), Joey Oltman ‘24 (Build Team), and FRC Teams 3314 and 834 for being awesome alliance partners.