[Lance]

First of all, the Houston Lone Star Regional was awesome! Like team 118 said, all the rounds moved smoothly and the food at the team party was great! Every team was extremely nice!

The Baxter Bomb Squad had 4 great practice rounds on Thursday with basically no problems. Friday the fun began, at least for some teams. For us, team #16, all was going great. We were the first match and we were allied w/ team #317, the countdown was finished and, oh crap, we are turning in circles. Our whole right drive side wasn't working. After the match, we figured out that there was a loose wire preventing us from using our right side, oh well. From then on out, we had very few problems and ended up seeded first thanks to our many allies along the way! Seeded first, we, of course, got first pick. Our first pick was team #118, an incredibly fast 2 goal grabber! Our second pick was team #609, another excellent 2 goal grabber. With our alliances, we fought through the semifinals to make it to the finals against teams #34, #457, and #192.

FINALS: We started out us (#16), and #118 vs. #457 and #192. Team #118 quickly grabbed onto to goals while we attempted to support them. All of the sudden, #118's drive system went out, and our picket line slowly faded back and we were in trouble. With #118's drive system failing, we desperately tried to push the goals back toward our scoring zone, but... unfortunately..., we lost the 3 goal match. Next match it was #16 (us) and #609 vs. #34 and #192 (i think). Team #609 quickly secured a goal while we filled up on balls that we were going to score into the goal (We never got to score them). Team #192 grabbed two goals and held on for dear life while #34 tried to hassle us from scoring our balls. Then, we encountered a major problem... We could not get away from our allied team #609, we were stuck on there other clamp, full of balls, and there was no getting off. For the remainding 1:30, we did everything we could do to break free, but there was no way to get off their clamp. We ended up losing. When the match was over, we walked over and checked it out and it took three of us just to get the clamp outta our robot. Hands were shaken, and fortunately, no damage was done to our robot. We had gotten 2nd place overall.

Despite our major problems in finals, our robot ran pretty good overall and we had a great time. Thanks team #118 and #609.

Great job to everyone in the Lone Star Regional!