Continuing where I left off...
Friday
Well things didn't go quite as planned because we lost all of our matches on Friday :( . All of our matches were very weird and nothing went as planned, but we still had a blast and managed to learn a lot from all of the teams in our division. Since we only had 4 matches on Friday there was a lot of down time and I spent alot of the day wandering the pits and taking pictures of cool robots, pit displays and everything in between. Mostly I was curious how teams displayed their outreach/Chairman's information. There were several clever ideas (like #1114 Simbotics Chairman's Museum poster) that our team can run with for Chairman's next year. In the evening we went to the Girl Scouts reception and had a nice chat with some of the Spacecookies (the other Girl Scout sponsored FRC team....they're from northern california). We ended the evening with a St. Louis Cardinals Baseball game. The baseball game was a different exerience for all of us because Austin doesn't have any major league professional sports teams, just minor league. We were all kind of shocked how fake the fans cheering sounded from the outside of Busch stadium (the noice sounded like the stereotypical roar on a TV/radio program). The game was a blast, but it was freezing (well for us Austin girls) and not quite as exciting as the atmosphere of a Texas High School Football game. We left during the 8th quarter with the Cardinals winning 12-1.
Saturday
We only had one match on saturday which we lost by 3 points but we fell over within the first 30 seconds of the match. We were crossing the bridge to play defense but in the process I drove over a ball and ended up with one wheel off the bridge; I didn't do a very good job of saving it and soon the robot was on it's back. We packed up shortly thereafter and headed to lunch, sad that we didn't get picked for an alliance yet glad that didn't have the stress of the elimination bracket (there were so many good teams it was hard to predict which alliance would win). We spent lunch eating in City Garden, which is a cute little interactive garden in the middle of downtown St. Louis. We made it back to the dome in time to catch the last of division awards and to go find a seat infront of the Einstien field. THE EINSTEIN MATCHES WERE CRAZY!!!!! The red side of the field was having comms. issues so the first two semifinal matches were replayed. To make a long story short #1114 Simbotics walked away with a Chairman's win (they truely deserved the win; the impact that this team has made across the FIRST community is remarkable), The Galileo Champs beat the Curie Champs for the Championship title. So Congrats to teams #16 (Bomb Squad), #25 (Raider Robotix) and #180 (S.P.A.M.). We ended the day with dinner at the resturant in our hotel, set our alarms for 4:45am and passed out in our respective hotel rooms.
The Conclusion of our Amazing Trip
We might not have walked away with a top 10 finish or a trophy but we did walk away with a lot of knowledge. We learned how important our mentors are; not just for all they do during build season but for all the effort they help during competition. We went to Championships with with no engineering mentors and we held our own, but our mentors were truely missed. We recognize that our team is heading in the right direction and learned ways to expand and improve. We've begun to build a stronger relationship with our major sponsor Girl Scouts of Central Texas and are working on getting more Girl Scout teams started across the country. We've set a schedule for off-season meetings and as I type this the team is getting a lesson in Solidworks. 4 of the 7 graduating Seniors are pursuing careers in STEM, a field that none of us would have even thought about had we not joined FRC.
Thanks for reading
Allison
graduating team captain
