SoCal Showdown
October 2025
We traveled to El Segundo, California, for SoCal Showdown! After the Houston World Championship, we’re excited to return back to California for our first off-season event! We are thrilled to debut our off-season robot after all of our hard work building it. Our students are excited to see what the competition will bring.
Since we were already in California, we had the opportunity to meet with our remote mentors! We don’t always see our remote mentors, since many of them strictly work with us online. But one of our mentors, Mrs. Kempen, had invited us to her house for dinner! It was great to see her outside of our usual calls and face-to-face. This was a great way for our team members to relax before the intense competition days. We also had the chance to see the Dodgers game that was happening in town, and it was an eye-opening experience! There were extra innings that went on, which were amazing to witness in person!
QUALIFICATION MATCHES
During qualification matches, we worked relentlessly to ensure our robot was performing the best it could. After we fixed the issue of the crooked shooting, it was scoring consistently. Each match, we continuously scored coral on the reef, shot algae into the net, and seamlessly hung on the deep cage. Our hard work secured us first place in the qualification matches, earning a 9-1-0 (win-loss-tie).
ALLIANCE SELECTION
Qualification matches ended, and it was time to move on to alliance selection! We choose Team 9408, Warren Warbots, as our first partner. Next, we chose Team 597, the Wolverines, to join our alliance, a fellow Hall of Fame Team. Lastly, we invited Team 691, Project 691, as our fourth and final partner. We were ready to take on any challenge that headed our way with our strong alliance!
For more information about the FIRST Hall of Fame: https://www.firsthalloffame.org/
LOOKING AHEAD
We first played against the 8th seed alliance, then the fourth. Next, we played the third alliance. We won all of our matches before the finals and were able to move on without dropping to the lower bracket. In the finals, we played against the fourth seed once again. We checked our robot to ensure that it would work without problems. We found that we had an issue with the Igus chain in our arm, and after discovering it, we alerted the alliance and made sure Team 691 was ready to swap in at a moment's notice. Luckily, we were able to patch the chain just before our finals matches. We secured back-to-back victories, making us the winners of SoCal Showdown!
PRACTICE MATCHES
On day zero, we arrived at the venue, unpacked our stuff, set up our pit, and dove into practice matches. Meeting and interacting with teams from all over opened the eyes of our students, and they enjoyed talking and exchanging ideas with everyone. We handed our stickers and chocolates to all of our new friends and wished them luck in the competition! During the matches, we had an issue with our robot. It always shot the algae to the left of the barge. We fixed this problem by better filtering our vision processing. Our robot was performing and competing well!
PLAY-OFF MATCHES
It was an honor competing at SoCal Showdown, especially since a mentor on Team 4201, Vitruvian Bots, one of the teams hosting the event, also mentors our team! Since the last time we were on the field, we have made so many improvements to our robot and strategy. Our team continues to evolve, as we have fixed the issue of our Igus chain malfunctioning before the next competition. We can’t wait to continue this momentum next week at Tidal Tumble. See you there!
Check out our other FRC Competitions!