Sunday, May 23. 2010
The morning started early with everyone waking around 5:30 am.
The night before Kim kindly placed out boxes of cereals, spoons and bowls for the hungry army of kids!
Leaving home at about 6:20 am, we arrived at the Northeastern Matthews Arena ready to unload and start practicing! The coolest part of the morning was that we could drive right into the arena to unload right next to our pit table INSIDE! The venue was very small, and thank goodness Regional Competitions aren’t held there!
Beantown Blitz accommodated approximately 39 FRC teams! The Thunder ended up with a very challenging day as we only had three students to drive and one alumni for coaching. Alex and Mike both switched off for drive-train, while Crystal manned the controls all day and Mark strategized.
The competition had a special feature in the matches which included a golden soccer ball which scored an additional two points! This bonus was not utilized in the very first match, but when teams began to notice the difference it made and just how much it curved matches, it was a battle on the floor the blitz the gold bean!
Overall we ranked 22nd out of 39. Thunderfoot had overcome many problems that ranged from hanging faults to controller problems and I/O Connections.
When it came time for the alliance selections, 467 — the Duct Tape Bandits moved up to seed 7 after the first two alliances made
their choices. Because of our team’s awesome relationship with the Bandits, they selected us for their first alliance partner pick. They then chose 121 — the Road Warriors as our final partner. Proceeding to quarter finals, our first match against our very own partners from Boston was 2648 — Infinite Loop along with 1519(Mechanical Mayhem), and 1073 (the Force team). We played a very tough match and lost by one point due to a penalty. The second match was well played by both alliances, but favored with Infinite Loop.
For lunch, we had cardboard pizza that claimed to be the best in the world. They lied.
For the rest of the day, we cheered on Infinite Loop and their alliance and watched them proceed to Finals where they fought hard but remained competition Finalists.
Leaving the arena at 6:30 pm, we said goodbye to the Matthews NU arena and headed back home to Kim and Eric’s! There, we prepared vegetables, burgers, hot dogs, sausages, and even pizza bagel bites to eat for dinner! Jeff and Eric cooked up on the grill and everyone else grabbed the grub. After Alex and Mark finished, they had the brilliant idea to make a bon-fire that will stay in the back-yard for a good few years.
Mentor Adam from Duct Tape joined us for our grilled dinner and later took some members out to the Cheesecake Factory to retrieve dessert. From there it was a camp out at the fire (which was nearly coals now with a giant tree trunk section) until it was hosed and it became lights out time!
Tomorrow the crew will be getting up early to tour Boston, enjoy some New England Chowder, see the Public Market and visit historical sites before they hit the road.
Until the, signing off so she can yet again get sleep of her own,
is Communications Director…
Crystal!!! 😁
With the protection of kitty cat Scrambles who will nom all the bugs that have intruded!
