- Thursday
- The pits opened at 8:30am and we immediately set up our pit, made some minor adjustments to the robot and sent our drivers off to the driver meeting.
- By 11am we had passed the height and weight part of inspection. After an hour of filing and waiting anxiously we finally passed inspection.
- The rest of Thursday consisted of 2 practice matches, tweaking of code, and adjusting our lifting mechanism's tension.
- Thursday evening back at the hotel we got in a game of 3 on 5 basketball (yes we know it's not even but the team of 3 actually plays basketball in school) and helped our Chairman's team prepare.
- Friday
- we were in the pits by 8:30am and ready for opening ceremonies to start
- Match #8: Loss 10-12 ; a set screw came out on one of our drive shafts so we couldn't go left. This match wasn't quite as successful as we wanted but it was only our first match
- Match #15: Win 27-12 ; I believe that we scored most of the points in this match. Our autonomous was lined up correctly and we scored both balls. This was by far our best match on Friday
- Match #20: Win 9-0
- Match #34: Loss 30-49 ; This was a good match even though we lost. We were against #359 the Hawaiian Kids (they won the Hawaii Regional) so it was an expected loss. However our one of our alliance partners, #1477 Texas Torque, balanced with #359 on the Coopertition Bridge so we shot up in rankings
- Match #42: Loss 4-22 ; This was also an expected loss because we were against #364 Team Fusion (another powerhouse team). We could have scored more but Team Fusion ball starved us, so for most of the match I had nothing to score :(
- Match #47: Loss 22-35 ; We lost this match but overall our strategy went as planned. We were hoping to get a double balance for the other 10 points but that didn't work so we single balanced on our own bridge for 10 out of the 22 points.
- Match # 59: Win 43-25 ; This was an expected win because we were pared with #118 the Robonauts and #57 the Leopards. The only downside was that we were ball starved again :(
- We were a little disappointed Friday evening because we ended 29th out of 55 and our prospects for getting picked for the elimination bracket were very slim. We hoped that our unique design would set us apart.
- Saturday
- We were the first match on Saturday so we had to be on the field by 8:40am. However we got to the pits at 8am so we could work with our alliance partners #2587 the Discobots. We added an autonomous mode so that we could drop our 2 balls into #2587's hopper.
- Match #67: Loss 21-46 ; Our end of the autonomous code worked but Disco didn't run their collection roller long enough so all 4 balls didn't get shot :( . Even though we lost this match we balanced on the coopertition bridge with #1477 to get extra ranking points.
- Match #74: Win 20-0
- Match #84: Win 16-2
- Saturday was an awesome day, so much so that #364 Team Fusion (who was ranked 3rd) approached us about being on their alliance for the elimination bracket. We were ecstatic because we had never been approached by a powerhouse team before. That being said they also wanted Discobots as well. So here's how alliance selection was supposed to work: #364 was going to pick Discobots first because #57 also wanted Discobots, and then #364 was gonna pick us on their second turn around. (Alliance selection works so that robots are picked by alliance captains 1 through 8 and then 8 through 1 so each alliance has 3 robots) We weren't really worried about being picked by someone else because we were ranked 29 on Friday and 18 at the end of qualification matches
- Alliance selection: #364 picked Discobots and everything was going as planned until the 6th seed alliance captain, #647 Cyberwolves, picked us. We were disappointed that we didn't get to work with #364 and the Discobots but this did give us the opportunity to work with Cyberwolves and #3103 Iron Plaid (also an all girls team). But being on 6th seed alliance meant that we would have to play against the alliance that was originally going to pick us :(
- Quarterfinal Match 4.1 = Win 29-28 ; This was an UPSET!!! we scored both our balls in autonomous and Iron Plaid scored both balls in autonomous. The real time results showed that we were tied 28-28 at the end of the match but since there are no ties in Quarterfinals the tiebreaker is the most points in autonomous. We squeaked out a victory but it was more than any of us could ever ask for.
- Quarterfinal Match 4.2 = Loss 21-55 ; this match went more as expected but since elimination is best 2 out of 3 there was still one more match to play
- Quarterfinal Match 4.3 = Loss 32-40 ; we lost but it was still a close match. If we had scored both balls in autonomous or if we had double balanced (instead of single balanced) on the bridge we would have won.
Competition was a huge success and I thank you for reading through our defeats and triumphs at Lone Star Regional 2012
Thanks for reading
Allison Rich
Team Captain and Driver
oh, I forgot to mention that I am 1 of 2 Dean's List Finalists from Lone Star Regional :)
