Results Are In. . .

They came from around the world - requests that is - requests to hear about the outcome from Sunday's competition.

First, you need to understand where we come from. This is an engineering program. My kids are coached by me, a biology teacher, who has no real training on engineering, building or programming! The kids from our middle school were really competing with the kids from the area who have a team. (They don't go to a particular school - some are homeschooled, some are privately schooled and some go to our school.) We had heard that the team from our town was having some good luck this week.

We, on the other hand, hadn't had good luck. 1.5 weeks ago we lost 2 team members - one broke his ankle and the other broke his wrist. Yes, we lost 1/3 of our team to injuries in GYM! Guess what were they doing...playing basketball and showboating! So they couldn't run the missions they had setup and practiced all season.

Speaking of the season - it started on September 5th! We were tired of the missions. We're tired of being nice to each other. We want to be done! But this all applies to everyone at the competition.

Now that I'm done giving our excuses. . . Our team did well! They went out to the competition table and got 60 points on the first run (out of an (im)possible 400.) Not so great. We went away a bit disappointed. The other team from town was also disappointed in their score - 100.

55 min and a few tweaks later - they went back for run #2 - and nearly tripled their score! They felt great! Other team is now behind them and stayed behind them for round #2!

Now it was time for the presentation of our research. We did a presentation on softscaping your landscape - judges thought it was about green roofing! We placed somewhere in the middle of the pack on that part of the competition.

25 minutes to refine the robot for the final chance at getting as many points as we could. It didn't go well; it didn't go badly. It just went! The other team passed us and placed higher than we did.

So we waited for a couple of hours for the head-to-head, bracketed competititon. We were near the top of the bottom half of the field. I know confusing - we were in the bottom 1/2, but not horrible! We were placed against a team that had scored 190! The other team from town went first; they scored 80. Our guys are up at the table and looking rather confident. I gave them an inquizitive look just before the 3, 2, 1 LEGO! "We just need to get 80!"

Now I understood the purpose of the day for our team - we just need to do better than the other team from town! They did - they scored a respectible 110 and were bumped out of the head-to-head competition.
And they went home happy.
They played a good game.
They played as a team.
They supported each other.
It was a good day.

3 guys will return to my team next year with this experience under their belts.
We will gain at least 1 girl for our team!

I have 3 "seniors" aka 8th graders that have been on the team for all 3 years it has been in existence.

Next year will be a rebuild for the middle school team. They will move on to high school. I'll probably have them in class. I will enjoy that. They will join the high school robotics team. They will then graduate and go on and do great things.

3 years ago at this time there was no robotics team in town; now there are 4 in a relatively small town.

3 years ago there were not robotics teams in the area; now there are about 15!

Pretty cool!

I can say I've been a part of something pretty cool!