ROBOTICS: MOONSHOTS TEAM MAKES GILMOUR HISTORY! Gilmour’s robotics team, The Moonshots, scored a last-minute entry to the Kent State Tournament, a late season tournament that typically features the top teams in the area. Because they were a late add to the tournament, the team was worried that their competitors had had far more time to hone their robots. Nonetheless, they were excited to compete one final time together as a team. And then, the unthinkable happened. Read this excerpt from Moonshots coach Mr. Matt Vanek to the team families after the tournament: “The top teams tend to appear at this tournament and, as it is late in the season, they have had the time to tune their robots to a high degree of precision and consistency. With the lack of time to polish our work and the general difficulty of the tournament, I figured we would have a fun day but that was it. One last chance for the team to hang out together and have fun running robots around the field. But then we won the first match. We won Match 2. We won Match 3. Match 4. Match 5. We were the only team out of the 27 in attendance to have won every single one of their qualifying matches. Yesterday, we were one of the teams that the other competitors wanted to work with because we had proven our strength. It was fun watching the respect directed toward our group from other teams.
Because we were in first place after the qualifying matches, our team was able to choose who we wanted to partner with in the playoffs. This is a complex decision and is never a guarantee…The ‘Rebelling Rangers’ from Eastlake joined us as our alliance partner. The finals are double elimination. Our first match was a tie. 101 to 101. The replay of the match allowed us to get our first playoff victory. Our second match was against the top-tier team, ‘Techno Domination’... They handed us our first loss of the day. Our third match was against ‘Blood, Sweat and Gears,’ who had decided not to partner with us for the finals. We decidedly won the match against them by a score of 114 to 69. The loss knocked them out of the playoffs and put us in the finals for a rematch against ‘Techno Domination.’ I'd like to say that the final test of our robot that day was an epic struggle, catapulting our team to a thrilling victory. The truth is ‘Techno Domination’ handily served us our second loss of the day, putting us in second place for the KSU tournament. It is during the award ceremony that the judges reveal which teams will be advancing to state-level competitions… And due to the absolute dominance exhibited in the qualifying matches, ... THE MOONSHOTS ARE GOING TO STATES!!”
The state tournament was held March 12-14 in Troy, Ohio, and the team competed among the top 38 teams in the state. Despite hardware failures that affected their performance during qualifying matches, the team competed in all five rounds and finished with a score of 144 points. The Moonshots earned their place at states and are already looking forward to next year.
Gilmour | SPRING 2026 SPRING 202
29
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online