Introduction
The Singapore VRC National Championship was held at SAFRA Tampines from 17-18 Jan 2020. We sent 4 teams (8076A, 8076B, 8076C and 8076Z) to this competition, in hopes of achieving a top 4 finish.
Unfinished Business
Ever since the unofficial inter-school scrims last June, the VEX section has worked tirelessly in hopes of finally producing fully functional robots in time. (even if some were simple ‘meta’ designs) For the first time, all teams actually finished early and had several weeks to practice and organise a series of internal round-robins. Inspite of this, we knew it would be an uphill battle to take down traditional local powerhouses like 8059 Blank (from ACSI) and Hai Sing Catholic School.
During the round-robin, most of our teams did relatively well, with all of our teams securing at least 2 wins. 8076B were 1 of 3 teams to win all 4 of their matches and they scored enough points to emerge as the first seed.
Playing to our strengths, we picked each other during the alliance section, knowing that weeks of endless practice among ourselves cultivated very good synergy among our teams. Unfortunately, 8076A and 8076Z fell short and were eliminated in the quarterfinals.
On the other hand, 8076B and 8076C cruised to the semi-finals off a first round bye (from clinching the first seed), where they faced off against 8059 Blank, who have dominated the Singapore VEX scene for more than a decade and had performed consistently well at Worlds. After an intense match, we advanced off a disqualification from our opponents.
From there, we coasted through the finals against a Chinese team and the team from SAS (Singapore American School), posting a tournament-high score of 82-24 to win our first ever VEX tournament.
Watch the finals in the video linked below!
Success at last
Attaining Tournament Champions was certainly unexpected. After years of mediocracy and an endless string of Judges Awards, we entered the competition targeting a top 4 finish at best. However, this season was without a doubt the season where every single VEX member worked the hardest, and all teams had their robots fully up and running weeks before the competition for the first time.
8076B also clinched the design award for having a unique RB4B design that is also capable of stacking multiple cubes in 1 go. The team also finished 3rd overall in the skills challenge.
Concluding remarks
While we were initially stoked at winning Tournament Champions and finally punching our ticket to VEX Worlds, our dreams were crushed when the COVID-19 pandemic worsened and Singapore began imposing travel restrictions. Several weeks later, Worlds was canceled.
While it was a bitter pill to swallow, we must move on. Despite this year’s success, we are still committed to do our best in future VEX competitions and not be complacent. Our section still has much room for development, especially when considering our competitors like 8059 Blank, who as an organization is far more established in the VEX scene and has a solid training curriculum in place to develop future batches of members.
Therefore, we are thankful for the invaluable lessons we have learnt in the 2020 season. Together with the expansion of our club, the VEX section will continue to fine-tune its operations, especially with regards to the training curriculum to ensure that seniors’ knowledge and experience can be transferred to our juniors. This way, they are set on the right path towards success.
We hope that when physical competitions resume, we will be able to retain our standards and find success on the international stage one day.
See yall next time!
Final award tally:
Tournament Champions:
Team 8076B (Trinity) & Team 8076C (Cypher)
Quarterfinalists:
Team 8076A (Link) & Team 8076Z (Morpheus)
Design Award:
Team 8076B (Trinity)
Skills Challenge 3rd:
Team 8076B (Trinity)
