We ended up in 9th place in the main competition (our final match was an exciting 3-1 loss that was tied with less than 5 minutes remaining), and 8th place in the drop-in competition. It is worth reminding ourselves that this in “9th in the world” not “9th in NESCAC”. It is a tremendous achievement for a group of undergraduates. None of the teams that were in front of us consisted of all undergraduates and only one even had a majority of undergraduates on their team.

Some other notes: Team members Kote Mushegian and Bella Tumaneng were named to be the head referee and game controller for the championship match. This effectively means that they were considered to be the best referees in the tournament. What really stands out about that, is that neither had any international experience at those jobs going into the tournament.

The final featured B-Human against U.S. Open champion Austin Villa. It ended in a 0-0 draw, with B-Human winning a penalty shootout.

The two time defending champions, UNSW Australia, did not manage to score a single goal all tournament and did not make the final 16. This clearly reflects how much RoboCup changes each year and how much harder one year can be from the previous year. This year the biggest change was the new ball and UNSW almost could not see it at all.

The changes are expected to be a little more modest for next year, but we can expect to see 1) artificial grass (much tougher for robots to walk on effectively), and 2) more natural lighting.