This weekend, the Senior School Robotics Team is headed to our first tournament of the new season. The team is very excited and has been working hard to prepare the robot for the upcoming competition. Each team has an assigned ID number; our team is Team 4951 - CDS Cyclones!
This weekend, the Senior School Robotics Team is headed to our first tournament of the new season. The team is very excited and has been working hard to prepare the robot for the upcoming competition. Each team has an assigned ID number; our team is Team 4951 - CDS Cyclones!
Each year, FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) creates a new game, and robotics teams around the world have six weeks to build a working robot to accomplish a series of tasks. This year, the game is called
CRESCENDO and has a music theme. “The difference between this year’s game and previous years is the odd, torus shaped play piece, which is nicknamed the ‘note’ after the whole note in music,” said
Vincent Wang ’25.
“A big addition for our team this year was the swerve drive. This allows our robot to freely move in any direction that we want it to,” explains Geoffrey Stefanov ’26. “The swerve drive lets the robot move diagonally without the robot itself needing to spin because the swerve wheels spin on their own,” continues Sydney MacDonald ’25.
Qualifying matches will run throughout the day on both Saturday and Sunday. On the morning of the event,
tentative match times will be posted on CDS Cyclones - The Blue Alliance, and scores will also be posted here after each match. Typically we have a match every 30-45 minutes throughout the day; competition matches run at the following times:
Saturday, March 9th - from 11:30 am to 7:00 pm
Sunday, March 10th - from 9:30 am to 12:45 pm
Playoff matches take place on Sunday March 10th - from 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm (depending on our results in the qualifying matches).
If you are able, we would love for you to cheer on our team! You can do so in different ways:
- In person - Come see us at the Ray Twinney Recreation Complex at 100 Eagle Street West, Newmarket. The CDS Team #4951 will be in Arena 1. Wear your CDS gear and bring your school spirit!
- You can watch the entire tournament live streamed on FIRSTCanada’s Twitch Channel. On the Ontario Newmarket event stream, look for the Team #4951 and cheer us on from home!
Our team is very excited to compete this weekend and to celebrate all the hard work that went into this season. We are especially thankful for our families, partners, fans, and everyone who makes this program happen. According to Geoffrey Stefanov '26, he chose to do robotics because it is a great opportunity to learn more about engineering and programming. “All the events are in groups of three so we get to partner up with other teams. This is great for teamwork and leadership development.”
Geoffrey continues, “One difficulty of building a robot in a short time frame is that you have to decide on a design fast. From the moment the game is revealed we have to be thinking about design. But we have to be decisive as we only have a short amount of time until our first competition and ideally our robot should be functional by then.”
Good luck to our team, we wish them all the best. Go Cyclones!