PT Roboctopi season done; Chimacum Minecrafters still squeezing in matches after coronavirus closures

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The same weekend that saw Gov. Jay Inslee announce on Friday, March 13, that he would mandate the closure of all Washington schools from Tuesday, March 17, through at least Friday, April 24, the competitive technology teams of Port Townsend and Chimacum incurred tragedies and triumphs, respectively, in their fates going forward.

SEASON ALREADY DONE FOR PT ROBOCTOPI

The Port Townsend FIRST Robotics Competition “Roboctopi” team competed at Glacier Peak High School in Snohomish from Feb. 28 through March 1, racking up seven wins and five losses of the 12 qualification matches they played, and finished 14th of the 37 teams attending the event.

Bottom line, the Roboctopi were heading into their follow-up round of competition at Bellingham High School from March 20 through 22, with 40 district points to bring to bear, putting them in a promising position for when all 150 teams in the Pacific Northwest District would get ranked overall by FIRST Washington; and a select number that qualify would be offered positions at districts in Cheney from April 1 through 4.

Except that the Roboctopi can no longer aspire to become one of the top teams to be offered slots at the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) World Championships in Houston, Texas, from April 15 through 18, because as of Thursday, March 12, the rest of this year’s FIRST season has been called off.

“Unfortunately, with COVID-19 reaching pandemic level, the leaders at FIRST Robotics and FIRST Washington have made the tough decision to indefinitely suspend the rest of our competition season worldwide,” Roboctopi president Olivia Morningstar said. “While the teams are still able to work on improving their robots, to hopefully be able to complete this year’s mission, we are, at this time, focusing on the health of our teammates, their families and our community.”

The Roboctopi have temporarily closed shop for a deep-clean, and with the statewide school closures now in effect, they’ve also postponed the open house they’d tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, March 18.

“We are still actively looking for sponsors in anticipation that, when we get the green light from FIRST and the state of Washington, we will be competition-ready and able to go on to round out what started as our best season yet,” Morningstar said.

CHIMACUM MINECRAFTERS STILL IN IT TO WIN IT

Their last day of school was Tuesday, March 17, but Al Gonzalez’s sixth-grade students at Chimacum Elementary School made the most of the time they had to continue their esports competitions on the mornings of Friday, March 13, and Monday, March 16.

While the Chimacum students had competed against the Club Minecraft UK in Guildford, Surrey, England on Feb. 21, Gonzalez’s sixth-graders had to cancel their game against their counterparts across the Atlantic Ocean and instead sought to throw the school’s four in-house teams against each other.

Originally slated for March 13, the Chimacum kids had to extend their Minecraft matches due to technical difficulties that made their Friday the 13th live up to its unlucky reputation.

“It went half great!” Gonzalez said of Friday’s competition. “The first two of our four teams to have all their members arrive on time got to start playing their head-to-head ‘Capture the Wool’ match, as part of the CompMC Spring League 2020.”

“Capture the Wool” is the competitive Minecraft equivalent of “Capture the Flag,” and CompMC is a competitive Minecraft esports league. Because the field as a whole is so new, the practicalities of staging matches aren’t always ironed out beforehand.

“Once the other teams were ready, they still had to wait, because there was only one CompMC manager available,” Gonzalez said. “It turned out to be difficult because, in order to set up the second competition map, he would have had to leave the current game alone.Fortunately, once one of the teams captured their first wool, because they score based on the best two out of matches, he was able to get the second match started, while at the same time preparing the other two teams’ first match.”

To further complicate matters, when the CompMC manager supplied the Chimacum teams with the IP address they needed to join the gameplay, Gonzalez said two of his teams tried to log in with no luck.

“The CompMC manager thinks that, since it was a numeric IP address instead of a word-and-letter IP, the latter of which was what the teams who were successfully playing got, our school’s filter must have blocked it, so we had to postpone half of our teams from playing until the following Monday,” Gonzalez said.

Even with Inslee’s decree in effect, Gonzalez felt fortunate that his students could still come to school that Monday, so everyone could play.

“Needless to say, the kids who didn’t get to play that day were majorly bummed,” Gonzalez laughed. “Those who got to play had a great time, though.”

March 13 saw the “Fabulous Fairies” play against the “Man Babbys,” the latter of whom won 2-0, while March 16 pitted the “Grey Warriors” against the “Creepers, Aw Man.”

Looking ahead, Gonzalez pledged to work with students who can play from home to continue playing CompMC matches against other schools in the United States, while also scheduling time to play separate matches against the kids from Club Minecraft UK.

Interested observers can check out the Chimacum Elementary Minecraft students’ matches on Gonzalez’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/user/educatoral/videos.