[Deke]

The biggest victory this year was through all the adversity we faced, our kids never put their head down. They dug in and kept pushing.

A little story, the year was 2014, and there was snow everywhere... We lost 8 days during build season, while trying to catch up on a schedule where we were a few days behind pace to start. This led to our first district attendence with green code and green drivers. The shooter was not tuned in and autonomous untested. The friday of the the first district we spent mostly figuring out how to get mobility points in autonomous.

I was so proud of our programming students and how they kept iterating and plugging away while the frustration built. By the last of the qualification matches saturday we had a working high ball autonomous with mobility options for distance! The whole team rallied together to get the robot working while in between matches. However, it was too little too late. We thought we demonstrated a good inbounding robot with defense, but it went under the radar and for the first time we were not selected for eliminations in a district.

Over the weekend between the first two districts, our human player lost a close relative. The students rallied behind him to support him and his family. He was able to attend the last Saturday of our second district.

Again the kids did not put their heads down but kept working. The second district event the auto was working and we never missed a shot, except for the two times attempting a two ball auto. Facing a tough schedule (played a district finalist twice, and another district winner twice) we went 6-6 and were selected by the third alliance captain! We made it to the finals but lost while dealing with alliance mechanical issues and some questionable technical fouls, oh and won an industrial design award! Too little too late again, not enough points were gained to reach MSC.

Seeing that we had budgeted for MCS and Champs we were able to slide into one more district. This time the auto worked flawlessly going 12-12 during qualifications. We ended up 9-3 and the third alliance captain! Losing in the semifinals to a very well meshed alliance, but we walked away with the engineering design award!

If you would add up the points for the last two districts we attended, we were a top 20 robot in FiM.

I could not be prouder of the students of Team 85. They demonstrated the essence of hard work and perseverance paying off. We went from not being looked at, to a top 3 pick, to a top 4 robot. There was no blaming anyone but ourselves for the situation, and the students took ownership of that and kept pushing. That is the victory.