East Bay Hills FTC Meet 1 results, and how to read the scoreboard

On Sunday morning, East Bay Hills League teams played the first qualifying meet of the FIRST Tech Challenge season at Piedmont Middle School’s Morrison Gym. Over 19 qualification matches of this year’s game, BIOBUZZ, each team played five times, with teammates and families filling the bleachers. Thanks to all the volunteers who refereed, scored, and kept the field running.

The top three after Meet 1

Congratulations to the three teams leading the league:

1. Ctrl-Alt-Defeat! (37264) is in first place with 18 ranking points from its five matches, an average of 3.6 per match.
2. Error 404 - Team Not Found (16278) is second with 14 ranking points. Its alliances averaged about 75 points and two Hive tips per match, and that points average was the highest among the top seven teams.
3. Short Circuits (18134) is third, also with 14 ranking points.

Acabots finished on 14 ranking points as well, so average match points decided the order among those three teams: about 75 for Error 404, 57 for Short Circuits, and 56 for Acabots.

Here are the top seven teams from the scoreboard at the end of the meet, each with five matches played. Full standings appear on FIRST’s league rankings page once the meet’s results are uploaded.

Rank	Team	RS	Points	Tips
1	Ctrl-Alt-Defeat! (37264)	1.80	28.40	0.80
2	Error 404 - Team Not Found (16278)	1.40	37.60	1.00
3	Short Circuits (18134)	1.40	28.60	0.80
4	Acabots (24689)	1.40	27.90	0.40
5	Circuit Breakers (21419)	1.30	18.50	0.30
6	The Patriots (3470)	1.20	25.70	0.80
7	FTC NewTeam Ewing (37261)	1.20	23.70	0.60

What “RS” means on the scoreboard

RS stands for Ranking Score, and it is the first number used to sort teams in the standings. Teams earn ranking points (RP) in each qualification match, and RS is the average of those points.

The numbers can look low during league play because league rankings are built on 10 matches, and any match a team hasn’t played yet counts as zero. After Meet 1, with five matches played, every number on the board is a team’s five-match total divided by 10. Ctrl-Alt-Defeat!‘s RS of 1.80 means 18 ranking points so far. A team can earn at most 6 ranking points in a match, so the highest possible RS after five matches was 3.00, and scores should climb at Meet 2 as those empty slots fill in.

The other columns work the same way. Points is the average of a team’s alliance scores with foul points left out, so Error 404’s 37.60 means 376 points over five matches. Tips is the average number of Hive tips, and Plays is the number of matches played. When teams are tied on RS, the order is decided by Points, then Tips, then average autonomous points.

How a BIOBUZZ match is scored

Each match puts two alliances of two teams against each other, with a 30-second autonomous period followed by two minutes of driver control. Robots collect yellow Pollen balls and alliance-colored Nectar balls and score them for these points:

• Hive tip: 20 points. Launching balls into a Hive’s upward-facing cell makes it tip over and present the other cell.
• Balls left in an upward-facing cell at the end of the match: 2 points each.
• Flowers: these open for scoring in the final minute. The alliance with the top-most Nectar of its color in a Flower owns it and earns 2 points for every ball inside. The alliance with the bottom-most Nectar earns a 5-point bonus.
• Garden: 1 point for each ball in an alliance’s Garden at the end of the match.
• Leave and park: 3 points for a robot that moves off the wall in autonomous, and 5 points for being parked in the loading zone at the end of autonomous and again at the end of the match.

Ranking points are separate from match points, and both partners on an alliance get the same ones:

• Win: 3 RP (a tie is worth 1)
• Swarm: 1 RP for 16 or more combined leave and park points
• Pollinator: 1 RP for 4 Hive tips, and a second RP for 7 tips

An alliance can earn Swarm and Pollinator points in a loss, so a team that hits those targets can move up the standings even without winning. The full rules are in the BIOBUZZ competition manual. The tip and Swarm targets above apply to league events, and FIRST sets its own targets for Regional Championships and the FIRST Championship.

What Meet 1 counts for

League meets have no playoffs or awards, and no team advances from a meet. Meet 1 results carry forward into the league rankings, which matter in a few ways:

• Every team plays in the League Tournament. All East Bay Hills teams are in the tournament on January 31, whatever their meet results.
• Only a team’s top 10 meet matches count. Teams play five or six matches at each meet, so a team that plays all three meets will drop its weakest matches. A team that finishes the meets with fewer than 10 matches carries zeros for the ones it missed.
• Meet results shape tournament seeding. Tournament rankings combine each team’s top 10 meet matches with the matches it plays at the tournament. Those rankings set the order of alliance selection and earn a team between 2 and 16 advancement points.

The rest of a team’s advancement points come from the tournament itself: up to 20 for alliance selection, up to 40 for winning the playoffs, and up to 60 for judged awards, led by the Inspire Award. A strong run through the meets gives a team a better seed, and a team that started slowly at Meet 1 can still advance through its playoff results and judged awards.

The top teams in advancement points move on to the NorCal Regional Championship. The region sets the number of spots each season, and three East Bay Hills teams advanced last season. From there, teams can qualify for the FIRST Championship in Houston, April 28 to May 1, 2027.

Coming up

• Meet 2, Sunday, December 6, Acalanes High School, Lafayette
• Meet 3, Saturday, January 9, Berean Christian High School, Walnut Creek
• League Tournament, Sunday, January 31, Piedmont Middle School

Families curious about FTC for grades 7-12 can find more on our robotics page.