Wow.
Last weekend we competed at the Lone Star Central regional in Houston, Texas. Let’s just say things went really well.
We drove down on Wednesday. Our trailer unfortunately broke down on the way, which meant our pit arrived hours late. We only had 30 minutes to put it together! Thankfully we had plenty of time on Thursday to finish it.
During the few weeks between Build season and our first competition, we made many changes to the robot. Thursday was spent applying them. Our robot was very top-heavy, so we replaced a lot of the heavy aluminum extrusions with lighter ones.
The qualification matches started on Friday. We did not have very much time to practice beforehand, so we did not know how well our robot would perform. We made modifications after every match to make sure our robot was performing well.
We started attempting to lift on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, we were never able to successfully lift a robot. We decided to ditch the lift and focus on the exchange later down the line, which was definitely the right decision.
We were able to consistently fill the vault every game, which eventually got us picked on an alliance for the playoffs. We were the first seed’s second pick, meaning we were the last team picked during all of alliance picking! Throughout the eliminations, we focused on filling up the exchange, while our alliance partners, teams 1477 and 4587, put cubes in the switches and scale. We scored over 400 points nearly every game.
After a couple tough finals matches, we managed to come out on top. We couldn’t believe we won the competition! It was an initial goal of ours, but we still weren’t expecting it. WE’RE GOING TO CHAMPS!!!!!
Winning the imagery award was the cherry on top. The marketing team worked so hard bringing the Power-Up theme to life, and we are so proud of how it turned out. (See Week 4 update for more on our imagery)
This season has been a crazy one, and we are not done yet. We will be heading out to the El Paso regional next week, and shortly after, champs! We are so excited for these next couple weeks. Follow us on social media for updates during the competitions!