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Originally Posted by santosh
Great job guys. I think I heard about this competition when we taught a school about VEX at a conference. Is there by chance a regional in the Southeast?
MIT has nothing on yall lol.
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There was not a VEX competition in the southWEST. However we bought a couple of VEX kits and formed an all girls team at school (The VEXens). The goal was to give the girls the opportunity to build and program and gain experience in construction.
At the Atizona regional they had a demo field and showed off the robots but there was no official game, thus there was no way they could qualify for the Nationals. Maybe there will be a VEX game in AZ this year.
MIT was a very strong competitor in 2004. In 2005 and 2006 they had catastrophic equipment failures which put them in the bottom of the rankings. I'm sure we have all had a match or two like that. Could happen to any team. All you can do is practice, practice, practice and test, test, ... Main problem (for us anyway) is we do not have access to a 40 foot pool. (The last two competitions have been held at the Neutral Bouyency Lab at the Johnson Space Center). What works in a ten foot pool can be crushed in a 40 foot one.
I think every FIRST team has cut corners on testing or practice and had it bite them at a round or two. One way or another we learn not to skimp on the testing or practice, if at all possible. The students at MIT that competed may not yet have enough experience. (Or as one kid said, "They have some of the smartest students in the U.S. on their team. All they are lacking is a homeboy who has been working with tools all his life." We laughed, but it may be true.