Two Panther Robotics teams competed at the Purdue Sigbots Fall Tournament in West Lafayette on November 15. 6842K Killer Instinct and 6842V Vicious Vortex met each other in the finals for the second time in a month.

6842K Killer Instinct—made up of Luke Aikin, Izzy Cohen, Arnay Garhyan, Aneesh Gupta, and Rishi Nagireddy—had a bumpier road to eliminations, finishing 10th out of 45 teams with a record of 6-2.  In eliminations, they were allied with Meta Mafia from Heritage Christian as the #1 Alliance. That alliance dominated their first two elimination matches before meeting Vicious Vortex—made up of Mason Bohm, Praneel Daliboyina, Lorelei Davis, Jackson Harper, and Keshav Krishnan—in the final match. Vortex finished qualifications 6-0, finishing 3rd, including a victory over Killer in the second match. They picked QC Robotics, a team from Carmel, as their alliance partner and were seeded 3rd going into eliminations.

Both teams breezed through the first two rounds of eliminations. Vortex and the QC Alliance beat the 2nd-seeded alliance in a close match in the semi-finals, while Killer and Meta Mafia easily won their match, setting up the final match. In a close game, Killer’s alliance emerged victorious, winning by a mere 13 points. Killer Instinct also walked away with the Amaze Award, given to teams that contribute to high-scoring matches and meet a high standard for their engineering notebook and interview. Killer also had the highest skills score of the day at 135 points, the second-highest score in Indiana this season.

Vortex won the Excellence Award, the highest award given at a tournament, for the fourth week in a row.

Both teams are competing November 21-22 at the Speedway Signature event being held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. All are invited to the competition to see over 100 of the best teams in the country compete. The two tournament champions and the Excellence Award winner will earn automatic berths to the World Championship in St. Louis in May. If you are interested, please visit https://www.speedwaysig.org/ for information.

Congratulations to Killer and Vortex for their performances this past Saturday, and good luck at Speedway!