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Posted by Thomas Grupp.

Engineer on team #378, Circuit Stompers, from Newfane High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 4/13/2000 5:51 AM MST


In Reply to: 'My Favorite Part was.....' posted by Erin on 4/12/2000 11:59 AM MST:



Lets see? My favorite part was definetly during the nationals.

It was our 4th match of the day on Friday. Prior to that match we had slipped a belt in the previous match. After fixing the belt the pit crew was running throuhg the check list to verify that H.A.N.K (Hi-Tech Automated Newfane Kid) was is working order. When going through the list, the Right side drive was not working. At this time it is approximately 30 minutes before we have to be on the field for our match. The pit crew kicked it into HIGH gear and started to change out the gear box. Time was wasting away! With seconds left we were running through the pits pulling HANK behind us trying to clear the way to get to the Newton field. We arrived at the staging area to find The next match already lined up in the tunnel and our match on the field ready to begin. The only way to get HANK to the field was to go around the teams through the same tunnel, as teams were bring their robots off the field from the previous matches.

As it turned out we were unable to get HANK to the field in time, we missed by about 30 seconds. We were allied with team #249 and our opposition was team #118 and #212. As the match went on with out us The Bulldogs went across the field and grabbed a black ball the then came back over and took the black ball from the Human player went to the goal and dumped the two black balls into the goal. They then proceeded to the bar where they hung. Meanwhile our human player and their human player were trying to score by throwing what yellow balls were left, one went in. I dont know who threw it, there was so much confusion at that time. As time ran down Quickly adding up the score it looked like our allinace was going to win! WOW, WE DID WIN 21-19. THANKS TO TEAM #249. We will always be indebted to The Bulldogs.

Anyway in the spirit of competition, after the match and we returned HANK back to the pit. The ENTIRE team went over to thank The Bulldogs For there FINE work in winning the match without our help. This is a moment that I will NEVER Forget!

We ended up 6-1 in our qualifying matches and ranked 36th overall. Both these things are definetly, my favorite parts.

Until Next Year!

Best Regards
Tom Grupp
Team #378
The Circuit Stompers!