The link to watch the first match, second match, and third match of the Windsor-Essex Great Lakes Regional final.
Link to a sponsor package can be found here. Any help getting us to Championships would be greatly appreciated!
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This weekend, we attended the Windsor-Essex Great Lakes Regional. We started off practice matches and qualifiers with little robot malfunctions or problems, and even held 17th place for a short amount of time. One change that helped us was that our programming team created two new autonomous programs so we could kick off each match confidently. Once again, our safety captain won "Star of the Day," as well as being offered a position as a safety trainee for future FRC competitions. Our scouters (and parent scouters!) worked hard, and remained very spirited, with painted faces and loud cheers, through the whole competition. As always, networking happened, and our team made sure to keep our team relations strong by befriending a Polish team and an international school's team, as well as several other American and Canadian teams. We made sure to offer help and friendly advice every time we met a rookie team. Our school rival, St. Annes, actually competed well and held 1st place for a time, despite being a rookie team.
On our final day, we woke knowing that we were placed 40th, and realized that if we didn't make good use of our last 3 matches, we wouldn't even see finals. In our first morning match, we paired with OP Robotics(2056) and MMRambotics(2200), to create a new competition high score of 170. The next two matches didn't score as high, but did push us up to 22nd place before alliance selection. Despite being in the top 24, many teams did not get chosen for an alliance. As selections progressed, our team began to believe we were also going to be one of them. At the very end, the first seed alliance (2056 and 910) made their final pick. They chose us. From there, finals were a whirlwind of cheering, suspense, excitement. We broke the high score twice, with scores of 200, then 205. Until championship matches, no one could get past our alliance's mix of defense and powerful offense. During the middle of our first championship match, our scaling arms started to extend without any command, and our shooter jammed. There was nothing our driver could do but park the robot at the base of the tower, as we lost our first match. The next match was close. As time ran out, the scoreboard said we'd lost, but we held our breath, because we knew that our alliance had scaled, and breached more defenses, but had no idea if that was enough to win. Then they revealed the final score, and we became overjoyed to find that we had won. The final match was incredible. Our driver pushed the bot to play offense, then switched over to defense and blocked at least three shots, then returned to offense and shot several high goals, and finally challenged the tower as our alliance scaled. In the last couple of seconds, we had the higher score and won! As soon as the championship matches are archived online, I will post the link. It was beyond incredible, and we're all proud of our driver and whole team. Thank you to our amazing alliance, OP robotics and Foley Freeze, our supportive mentors and parents, and our generous sponsors. (Especially Valiant, for the celebratory post-competition dinner!) Now, we have the opportunity to go to St. Louis championships for the second year in a row, this time by our own success. Championships will take place from April 27th to Apr 30th. Fundraising and other preparations start tomorrow! Cincinnati had the huge amount of hectic, exciting fun that always comes with FRC. Our first day was spent travelling and settling into our homey hotel, and loading in the robot.
Waking up at 6:15AM on Thursday, we ate breakfast and drove to competition. Our first practice matches went smoothly, scoring 2 high goals and almost scaling the tower. We quickly realized safety was practiced very differently in Cincinnati. Non-flowing skirts and shorts were allowed, and we had to reprimand a couple of people for having long untied hair while working on their robot. There were no safety chips to exchange with other teams, however there were "Star of the Day" forms to fill out. Lots of networking happened, as we introduced ourselves as the sole Canadian team. At the end of the day, our team marched home with our heads held high, and worked together to make our own dinners at the hotel. We also welcomed back our grade tens(or sophomores, whichever you'd like to call them), who had just finished their OSSLTs. Friday was busy with matches, bot repairs, and scouting. We started our day with a... imperfect version of the Canadian anthem (the sound coordinators did apologize for that), the elegant Japanese anthem, and patriotic American anthem. By the end of the day, our vision system had been jostled around during matches, which hindered our accuracy. Our safety captain was surprised with the "Star of the Day" award. We ended our day by eating hamburgers made by our mentors. On the final day, we packed up our bags first thing in the morning, and left for the competition. There, we competed with our fullest ability, only to receive 46th place and not be chosen for a final alliance. So, we ended our day early, and drove 6 hours home, through a little rain, hale, and finally snow. We finally arrived back home around 8, and went home proudly as a team, knowing we played the game the best way possible: with lots of gracious professionalism. Now we just have the Greater Lakes Regional to look forward to. Anyone who wishes to see us compete in our home territory should visit University of Windsor - St. Denis Centre next Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, between 8AM and 6PM! |
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April 2018
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