[archiver]

Posted by REDACTED.

Student on team #293, BullBots, from Hopewell Valley Central High and Janssen Pharmacutica, Morehouse Engineering.

Posted on 4/13/2000 8:27 AM MST


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



My favorite part of the competition was definately our last qualifying match in the NJ regionals, the first regional we attended since last year's fiasco with the drive train and placing of 55/60 in Philly(i was actually quoted in the school newspaper about expecting us to do better this year. 54th out of 60 was my prediction thou, go figure).

Anyway, it was one of the last matches of the day and the 4 teams were 47, 176, 224 and us. Throughout the first few matches we had been having pretty crappy luck with most of the systems we didnt have a chance to test before shipping. Our bumper only ended up being a hinderance in ball collection, somone accidentally connected the conveyor belts backwards after inspection which we didnt notice in time for our first match, and we went through atleast 3 different types of front wheels (one of which almost getting us DQed for tearing up carpet. can we say too much traction?) before we found a type that worked. But by our last match we were feeling pretty confidant in Spike's abilities and our only real fear was that we'd end up with a non-functioning or non-existant alliance partner.

As is the case with any qualifier, we were hoping to get paired with the best ball collectors there, in this case team 47, and get those few extra points we needed for even a chance at getting into the elims. Much to our dismay at the time (we have since changed our minds) we were teamed up against the one robot to not lose any of the qualifier matches in that competition and the pairings stood at 47 and 176 vs. 224 and us. It would've seemed that the evil fish did not favor us( to see a picture of the evil fish turn to page 666 of 'Fundamentals of Physics Fifth Edition', if you dont know or care what the evil fish is, dont worry about it)

It had to of been one of the most intense matches of the regional and due to the knowledge we picked up in 47's previous match against 246 (where Delphi still came out on top, but NSTAR discovered that if they blocked 47 whenever they tried to dump balls, they could keep the scores much closer), and 224 covering 47 we forced their alliance to rely solely on what 176 could pick up and managed to keep the scores almost neck in neck.

In the end, it came down to the two balls sunk by our alliance's human players that made for the final scores of 24 to 22 in our favor. It seemed that the evil fish was smiling on us in his floating beaker of green liquid after all and we got the mystical 66 qualifying points that we needed. Definately a very intense and well played match by all involved.


REDACTED
Team 293