177 at NE GSD

[M. Lillis]

First of all, we would like to thank 138 and 3323 for being great alliance partners. We had a great time at in Nashua, and hope to have even more fun competing at Hartford District.

One of our student mentors took video of all of our matches, the playlist can be found here: 177 Granite State Playlist (I recommend watching eliminations.)

You can tell from the playlist that we stuggled on Friday. We owe a big thanks to 151 and their machine shop for giving us extra gears for our winch, after it broke twice on Friday. Because we missed Suffield Shakedown in Week 0, we had to work out all of the kinks on Friday, during qualification matches. By the end of Friday we were functioning at 100%, ending the day with a record of 4-5.

On Saturday, we continued the success that we saw at the end of Friday. Our only loss during qualifications on Saturday came from a strong alliance of 133, 2648, and 1922. We ended qualification matches with a record of 6-6, and ranked 18 out of 39 teams. During alliance selection, we were picked by the #1 seed, team 138, after team 131 declined their offer. We picked 3323 as our third alliance partner. We made it to the end of semi-finals without any major mechanical problems, with 138 and 3323 being perfect in autonomous. In finals, we met the #2 alliance of 131, 1519, and 1786. It was a tough matchup, with the finals making it to a third round. In the final round, 3323 got stuck in the opponents low goal, making it 2 on 3. We were up by about 100 points, so we switched to an all-defense strategy in order to prevent 131 from getting to their scoring position.

This is our first Regional or District win since 2006, and our first blue banner since 2011. We also won the Entrepreneurship Award, thanks to our re-vamped fundraising strategy and dedicated fundraising team. Again, a huge thanks to everyone that helped make this build season so successful and making GSD an amazing event.