This past weekend was the all-anticipated Philadelphia Regional; our home away from the shop. Going in we had a lot of repairs to do: a complete flip of the electrical board, supports added to the arm for stabilization, a swap of the nano tubes containing our drive system, a new minibot with legal deployment, and most importantly, a new motor for our roller claw. All were completed by the middle of practice day and we got 3 or 4 rounds of practice in with no problems! Not once did we shut off in the middle of the match and we did extremely well, putting up an average of 2 logos and deploying our minibot.
Thursday came and went and next thing we knew it was competition day. Game after game, logo after logo, minibot after minibot, the points were racking up and we found ourselves fighting for 1st place with some great teams. The only thing separating our undefeated streak from theirs were a few ranking points. The only robot problem we had all day was the littlest air leak in our pneumatics. It was by far the smoothest and most successful regional I’ve ever experienced. The award ceremony ended and we came away with a few awards. First was the website award, which was a huge honor. I know how hard our website team has worked and they did a fantastic job. The pride and joy of the regional though was the Woodie Flowers Award which Mr. Ostrow had the honor of receiving. We’re all so proud of him and of the students who wrote the nomination essay. Once again the day ended and the next was the rest of qualifications and playoffs!
We started Saturday with our first loss, over which some have called a debatable ruling by the referees. Who really knows? We won our final qualification match and ended up in 3rd place. During alliance selections we were chosen by the first place seed and formed a powerful alliance. In the first round we won 2 straight matches and advanced to the semi finals. We had a small malfunction and lost the first semi finals match but picked it up in the second and we were both one win and one loss from moving on and being eliminated respectively. In the 3rd match one of our alliance partners received a red card which applied to the whole alliance, disqualifying us from the competition. It was a big disappointment for all of us but we did our best and clearly people knew we were a powerhouse; countless people from great teams came up to me and told me we had the best robot in the competition and were shocked we were eliminated but it’s over now and there’s nothing we can do but look forward to the championships in St. Louis!
Get ready Missouri, Miss Daisy is coming for you!
