Congratulations to everyone at CIR. So many to thank and praise. Organizing committee, every flavor of volunteer, the Field Team, Bradley University for hosting at a fantastic venue, Dean Kamen for visiting, and most important every student - win, lose, or draw.
Great job to awards winners and a couple special shout outs:
- Rockford Robotics/2039 - CA
- Thunder Robotics/876 - EI
- Mechanical Monarchy/5442 - Rookie All Star, Highest Rookie Seed
- Woodie Flowers Finalist - John Johnson, MARS/WARS 4143
- Volunteer of the Year - Vera Koch
- Dean's List Finalists - Dean himself presented the certificates on what happened to be the 26th anniversary of FIRST. Ethan Blomberg of Ninjaneers (Ethan, I'm willing to be that whenever you meet Dean he will remember the story and you'll get that photo op) and Addie Longberry of Rockford Robotics
- Roboteers, Argos, and Blue Twilight - Regional Winners
- Duluth East Daredevils, MARS/WARS, and Techno Ferrets - Runners Up
- Argos/1756 - Creativity
- Blue Twilight/2220 - Entrepreneurship
- MARS/WARS/4143 - Excellence in Engineering
- ASAP/4646 - Gracious Professionalism
- DERT/2040 - Imagery
- Beak Squad/4028 - Industrial Design
- Blue Twilight/2220 - Safety Award
- Duluth East Daredevils/2512 - Innovation in Control
- Chicago Knights/1739 - Judge's Award
- Roboteers/2481 - Quality
- GoldenHorn/5665 - Rookie Inspiration
- Up Next/3528 - Team Spirit
Special praise for our three rookie teams. Mechanical Monarchy for the well-deserved awards and also as a team we have a special tie with, Golden Horn for the Turkish Delight, the coffee, the friendship, the singing, spirit, and for the solidly-built and well-performing robot .
And a slightly longer story about 5537/Dia and the Brobots. It's worth telling because we can all go find 100 other places to build a robot, but only FIRST gives us the chance to participate in things like this. This is a story that many older teams know very well. Starting with a built robot Thursday morning but having a
complete tear down by just after lunch. A lot of metal cutting ensues, and a freshly rule-compliant and rebuilt robot emerges by Thursday 8 pm. They did all that and still got out to at least one practice match. Thanks to Big Al and the Robot Inspectors for their diligence and help.
The part of the story that
not every older team has had to live through is that 5537 only had about 6 students and one mentor with which to pull all that off. Remember, except for a rule violation, they showed up with a built and working robot. An accomplishment all by itself for a team of any size, but very special for an entirely (including the one mentor) rookie team with only a small handful of students.
5537 adopted "who needs 6 weeks" and"robot in a day" as their rallying cries and got to work on the problem. Of course Gracious Professionalism was in evidence. Forgive me if I miss anyone because so many offered help (and feel free to add to the post), but in particular ASAP (GP winners), Wildstang, Up Next, and MARS/WARS.
5537 then converted all of that into consistently improving performance on the field, building up to a 3-stack and always contributing to their alliances. The team exemplified a never give up spirit in the face of what surely must have felt like devastating news at that first inspection and that spirit gave real results. They students and mentor of 5537 should be very proud of themselves.