[EricH]

I happen to know that it is quite possible (and practical) to recreate Triple Play with a VEX Starter Kit, some fishing line, and a bunch of drinking straws. You'll probably also want some wooden dowels and some cardboard for the goals.

The straws are for tetras. Cut pieces to the appropriate length, thread the fishing line through the pieces (I don't remember the pattern offhand), and tie it off the right way, and you have a perfectly good tetra. Remnants of straws can be used as alliance flags.

For the robot portion, it's really easy to do a single-joint arm...

330 did it for a fundraiser a few years back. The second day, we turned it into soccer because it was hard for people to handle the tetras with the stock robots we provided. As this is for more veteran types, that won't be as much of an issue.