Wisconsin Recap

[driveman]

This is my first year as a mentor. I was selected by the other mentors of our team to be the lead mentor for FIRST Team 3692 Rock 'N' Robots. We are from Janesville, Wisconsin in Rock County. This is our third year, and the team performed to its fullest. The mentors on our team let the students do the planning, design and implementation. We were there for answering questions or questioning them. We also made sure the students performed the work safely. We were anxious to go to the Wisconsin regional competition.
Thursday and Friday the students practiced and fine tuned the robot. It was exhilarating to watch them. One of their main objectives was to perfect the autonomous shooting. The shooter was the best in their eyes. Competition proved this out.
Our drivers were very cognizant of their performance on the course. They maintained their poise and drove the robot respectively. The team was rather distraught when the robot was hit by another going full speed with full intent on knocking Rock 'N' Robots 3692 out of the game. The impact dislodged four of the spring clips that secured the bumper. These clips are used on agricultural equipment. Also a wheel was broken. This was a blatant hit to take the robot out. The strategy did not work because the students were determined to come back. They did.
FIRST Team 3692 Rock 'N' Robots did not give up. We came back and finished in first place out of fifty seven teams. We were first seed. Not bad for a young team and simple robot.
Our autonomous shooting was very accurate and repeatable. Our shooter performed very well. This became apparent to the competing teams and here in my view the gracious professionalism ceased to exist. The theme to me appeared to be to do anything to survive.
Saturday became a totally different atmosphere. It was do at all costs or die. I may be wrong but it appeared by all the postings in the pit that the older teams dominate. They know the politics.