Melbourne robotics team reaches Space Coast Showdown final: how local students fared

Melbourne’s Team Voltage reached the final at Space Coast Showdown, a student robotics competition held September 26 at the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum in Titusville. Team 386 competed alongside Shark Attack and C4 in the three-team group that finished runner-up, according to the posted results.

In FIRST Robotics Competition, high school students work with adult mentors to design, build and program robots for a game played on a competition field. Three teams compete together as an “alliance.” At Space Coast Showdown, Voltage’s group was called Alliance 5. The final scores belong to the combined alliance, not to an individual student or robot.

Alliance 6 — RamTech, Children of the Swamp and TechnoSaints — won the final series against Voltage’s alliance, two matches to none. The winning group scored 303–35 in the first final and 315–113 in the second.

A qualification ranking is not the final placing

Cocoa’s Bionic Tigers, Team 1592, led the qualification table with seven wins and no losses. Rockledge’s The Pink Team, Team 233, ranked eighth at 5–2. Melbourne’s Wingspan, Team 7431, ranked 12th at 4–3, and Team Voltage ranked 14th at 4–3. Each of these records covers seven qualification matches.

The event has two different results to read: a qualification table ranking individual teams from their qualification matches, and a playoff bracket showing how the alliances progressed to the final. Voltage’s 14th-place qualification ranking and its alliance’s runner-up finish describe these different stages. Likewise, the Bionic Tigers’ first-place qualification rank does not mean they won the event.

FIRST’s event pages label Space Coast Showdown an off-season competition and warn that its rules may differ from the regular season. These results should therefore be read as this event’s results, not as statewide school rankings or regular-season championship standings.

For students interested in getting involved

Team Voltage’s joining page directs interested students in grades 9–12 to its student signup form. It says the next steps include meeting information, annual forms and a safety orientation. Families can check that page for the process; the results above do not establish eligibility, fees or a guaranteed place on the team.

Results were checked at 11:04 a.m. Eastern on September 27. The event overview now lists the competition as complete; the playoff page records the winning alliance and both final scores.