On Saturday, the team went to our first Off-Season event, Brunswick Eruption 13, hosted by Team 25 - Raider Robotix. We've been preparing for this event for the past two weeks. Since many of the rookies expressed interest in attending, we had to get them ready as well as ourselves. This included a new set of scouting forms to replace the Android app that we used for competition. According to the agenda, qualification matches took place in the morning with Alliance selection immediately following the last match. That means we did not have time to reenter the scouting data into a spreadsheet to generate the pick list. The scouting leads spent one training session teaching the rookies how to record match data. I did some pre-scouting and found that about 10 teams had gone to Worlds this year and one of them had made it to the finals. Looks like it will be an uphill battle.
Tomahawk had to be checked and tuned up. We discovered many loose or missing nuts and bolts. The catapult was not at the right angle. Bumpers had to be repaired. Also, since we offered to lend our practice robot, Beta, to the rookie team 5599 (The Sentinels) from Cardozo, we had to tune it as well.
We also needed to define our drive teams. As a rule refresher, I prepared an abbreviated version of the driver and game rules test for those who applied for the drive team. Rookies applied for the role of the Human Player. We had set up a small test course for the drivers, operators and human players.
Factoring in the test course timings and test scores, Marcus and Ian tied for the highest driver score.
Unfortunately, we didn't have time to do any additional practice before Saturday.
Packing tools and spare parts was done on Friday and everything was loaded into one of the school vans. The second van would also be put to use.
As Mr. Heitman said, this week was a tough one: Open House on Monday, Parent Teacher Conferences on Wednesday and Friday, and Founder's Day on Thursday.
On Saturday morning around 5:30 am, the van with the robots and gear and drive team and safety members set off first for North Brunswick. About an hour later, the second van with the remaining students along with vehicles of other parents and mentors headed out.
Because we had a couple of kids taking the SAT IIs that morning, I watched the matches on the live stream that was provided. You can tell that many teams had new drivers like ours. Some of the driving was not as efficient, some simple mistakes made - like forgotten rules or not really understanding the game or forgetting to load the ball in the robot for autonomous. But that was to be expected, after all, you vet out drivers in off-season events. Teams also test out new components. One team had switched their drive train to a new one they worked on since competition. Sure we could have tested our summer project if only we thought of it sooner.
We arrived after the alliance selection to witness the Evil Sundae Contest - luckily our first candidate pulled out before he had to eat bacon (because he can't) and our brave substitute survived sauerkraut, mayonnaise and other goodies.
So at the end of qualifications, we ranked 12th. I was happy to find that the scouts were able to produce a pick list. I'll need to get a copy of it and review the scouting data. However, we ended up not having to use it as we were picked as the 4th robot for Alliance #6. For Aerial Assist, that meant we were backup if one of the other 3 broke down.
Apparently the alliance captain did have problems and we got to play in the second match. Woohoo!
Ultimate, our alliance lost in the third match and did not advance to the finals.
Then it was time for awards. The rookie award went to Team 5599 (aka 2602 - because we shared bumpers modified with tape with them), but they were outside in the parking lot!!! Mr Heitman went to get them and then the Mahalo award was given to us for GP (Gracious Professionalism) - i.e. helping the rookies participate. The award trophy was a tikki. Yes - they had a Hawaiian theme.
We departed, got stuck in traffic and eventually made it back to school between 7:15 and 7:45 pm. By the time we unloaded everything back into the bathroom and put the seats back in the van it was around 8:30.
Lessons learned:
- people need to eat - even if they are picky about the food and especially if they are on the drive team otherwise they end up eating Kit Kats and Pringles or have stomach cramps. Ever heard of : Beggars can't be choosy?
- people can step up to fill the gaps - we had new people in most of the roles. The team's presentation for the Hoku (mini-Chairman's) award got positive feedback.
- we need lots more practice driving
- drive team needs to know the rules
- scouting matches is boring but it is very important
- we need to use our packing list when packing or keep forgetting things
- check the agenda and plan accordingly - No, alliance selection isn't after lunch break
- there's no hope for dancing or spirit awards on our team :(
- off-season events are great!
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