Bensalem was our third and final district competition before World Championships in Detroit, and it was our most exciting yet. We started off strong when a student brought in daisy-face macarons to our Day 0 crew–they were delish. Just when we thought our Bensalem experience couldn’t get any better, we won our first 4 matches–our best start for any competition this season. Yet, after a series of unfortunate events, we ended qualifications ranked 21 out of 31 teams. Our scouting team, however, had been collecting data on the performance of other robots, and spent day 2 selling to teams.
Come alliance selection, we were picked by team 303. After a moment of deliberation, together we picked team 6808, and our alliance was set. Our 
strategy teams worked out a course of action for the coming elimination matches. With this, we played three quarter-final matches, where we reigned victorious and were able to move along to semi-finals.
In our second match of semi-finals, we lost to the other alliance by one point. Come awards ceremony, we were granted the Gracious Professionalism award for helping several other teams when they needed it most.
Though saddening at times, this competition opened our eyes to a variety of changes we could make before worlds. For example, the hatch floor intake mechanism would later be redesigned, and the HAB mechanism tweaked for optimal performance. Additionally, in a post-competition, pre-bus-ride-home game of hacky sack with approximately twenty students and coaches, we realized that if anything, our hacky sack skills need to be improved the most. Just remember: headers never work.
