We arrived at Salem High School, where we split off into three groups: scouting, pit, and stands. We all started working instantly. Scouting split off into the pits. The business team spent the first half an hour of the competition on scouting. Knowing the strengths, weaknesses, and strategies of the other teams, who represent both potential opponents and allies, is a vital part of the challenge. Soon after we finished, the competition started.
Opening ceremonies were a blast! We saw Crowd-O-Tron help the audience get hyped and ready for the competition, we watched interesting videos on the benefits of being a part of FRC, and we had a moment of silence for our great mentor Woodie Flowers.
Once opening ceremonies ended we were excited and ready to compete. For those of you that don’t know, matches are held between two “alliances” consisting of three different teams and their robots. Two alliances are on the field at a time, attempting to complete more objectives than their opponents. Teams score points through shooting “power cells” (dodge balls) into one of three targets and suspending themselves on a tilting bar.
Our robot drove with vigor. As the programming and drive teams worked together to maneuver the robot to success. We scored an average of six power cells in each match, some of which were during the autonomous period.
We found that our strengths were in our hopper wheel, which was highly functional, and we had significant success with the power cell missions. Additionally, we were able to effectively defend against the other alliances during the teleoperated period (during which we are allowed to directly control the robot) and successfully offloaded three dodge balls during one autonomous period (during which we can’t directly operate the robot).
Meanwhile, our interactions and conferences with the judges also went quite well. The notes from our Chairman’s Award were great! But more importantly, thanks to the hard work of the business team, efficient spending on the part of the build team, and of course extreme generosity on the part of our sponsors, our efforts were recognized and we took home the entrepreneurship award.
At the end of the competition, the eight most successful teams each chose two other teams to join their alliance. We were not among the chosen few, but our team spirit was through the roof.
Today, as I’m writing this, we’re having a team wide discussion on exactly how we plan to make sure the competition can go even better. We had a lot of good moments; we won an award, we scored higher than twelve other teams in the matches, but it’s also important that we reflect on where things went wrong. We are still working on improving our lift bar, and our intake/output system. We are already making plans to modify our bumpers, change the lift bar design to something less bulky, and revise the design on our frame.
We don’t dispute that we made errors in our design, but we didn’t survive New Heights closing for nothing, and we’re not going to stop surviving now. Next competition we’re going to come back, we’re going to try again, and even if we encounter mishaps, we’ll keep coming, because we’re the Portsmouth High School Wire Clippers, and it doesn’t matter what the scoreboard says. We’re built to last.
