Saturday, March 5. 2011
It is now Saturday night after our first competition for the 2011 season. I promised I could get a brief synopsis in of the competition and let others fill in more details tomorrow after a bit of rest.
Friday was a long day! After having so much trouble on the field on Practice Day, the field seemed to run fairly well. We dove into our qualification matches with great enthusiasm! And by the end of the day, we were somehow ranked 4th. The robot needed repairs and tweaks during the day, autonomous mode seemed elusive and the mini-bot wasn’t as consistent as we wished it was. The drive team got some much needed experience managing Thunderous Prime, but still weren’t having an easy time of it.
In the evening the strategy team spend several hours reviewing all of the other team’s results, which pretty much meant none of us had any energy left to blog.
Today we had two final qualification matches. Unfortunately we lost both of them although the drive teams seemed much more comfortable driving the robot.
During alliance selections we were selected by one of the Rookie Teams, 3799 which made us part of the 5th place alliance. W didn’t make it out of the quarterfinals, but were treated to some great matches by semifinalist and finalist teams!
During the matches we were presented with one of the Top 4 Safety Team awards in the pit. Go Mike Mo., this year’s safety captain. He did a great job representing our team!
At the awards ceremony, 1511 received the Gracious Professionalism Award! We then capped the ceremony by having one of our Juniors, Jason, recognized as a Dean’s List Finalist!
Well, that’s the news! More details should follow. If we catch up on our sleep that is!