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Maui High School’s Robotics program, Team 2443: Blue Thunder, achieved what they set out to do from the start: win Hawai’i Regionals and be invited to the World Championships. It has been 13 years of constant efforts, nail-biting matches, and second-place medals, but this year’s team took home the gold. However, they don’t want to stop here. Team 2443 wants to challenge teams worldwide at the FRC World Championships. To do so team 2443 must fundraise $35,000 before April 20th. They are humbly asking for any monetary donations to get their group of 29 students to the World Championships in Houston, Texas.
In Maui High’s Robotics team, everything is done entirely by the students: the ideas, designs, making, programming, and documenting. The team has a 10 week period to take their ideas to a tall 125-pound robot, resulting in the students devoting over 40 hours a week to hone their craft. The hard work and countless hours of dedication would be translated into the motivation and efforts shown at the 2022 Hawai’i Regionals.
In Hawai’i Regionals there are qualification matches and playoff matches, all following the same format. Each match starts with 15 seconds of autonomous, a period in which the robot does everything by itself, after autonomous is finished it switches to 2 minutes and 15 seconds of teleop, a period where the robot is controlled by the student drivers. Team 2443 finished as the second rank allowing them to be the second-seeded alliance captain and choose who their other two partners are.
Though it was a rough road, team 2443’s alliance was now in the finals match against the first seeded alliance, the same alliance that had beat them multiple times in previous years. Unfortunately, team 2443’s alliance did not win the first finals match in the best of three series. “It was as history was repeating itself, I knew the feeling oh too well.”, said Keithjan Quilal-lan, but with the constant support from his team, wise words from mentors, and fellow drive team members he knew that there was still a chance. With this new spirit and mindset, team 2443’s alliance won the second finals match. It was now the tiebreaker match, the teleoperated period finished and the final score was loading. Team 2443’s alliance all huddled together, waiting and hoping for the screen to load.
“Me and Uncle Don kind of just turned to each other and screamed into each other’s faces.” Neill Nakamura (advisor of Team 2443) explained as he saw the final scores revealing that their alliance won. Tears of joy energized jumps, and tight hugs followed the victory. However, the team had a farther journey ahead of them, the World Championship was only two weeks away.
Team 2443 is aiming to bring their entire team (29 students and 5 mentors) to Houston, Texas. Their fundraising goal is $35,000 and is only halfway there. Team 2443 will be hosting a rummage sale, silent auctions, and food truck event on Saturday, April 16, from 7 am- 12 pm near Maui High’s front office parking lot. To donate and support Team 2443, mailing checks or cash to Maui High’s address or donating through Maui High Foundation’s website (http://www.mauihighschoolfoundation.com/donate) and listing “For Maui High Robotics” in the donor note will help them substantially.