twoplustwoequalsblog

So I have returned from Hotlanta, home of a cool park and really big stadium. A fun fact about Atlanta I did not know: CNN is pretty much run out of Atlanta. Interesting choice.

Basically, at the end of Friday, we managed to win a match we were almost sure we would lose, making us 5-0. Then we won two more we were sure we would lose, making us 7-0. We were winning matches by like one or two points. It was crazy. Our alliance selection meeting paid off hugely, and we paired with 1126 and 201. Both were good shooters (we aren’t) and both were good at scoring in autonomous (we can’t) and they could both ramp (we can!). We manage to squeak through the quarters, barely win the semis, and then pull out a win in the finals! We were Galileo Division Champions! 13-0 so far for the competition.

However, there are 4 divisions, so we still had the Championship Semifinals and Finals. We are facing a super hard alliance from Newton. We were really afraid of team 25, and planned to dog them the whole match. Jesse changed up the strategy at the last second and we focus on their other scoring bot, and win the first match! Amazing! Twelve teams beat team 25 at all this season, and we are one of them. We had worse luck in the rest of the best-two-of-three match against them. We were tipped over in the second match, and one of our partners broke in the third match. So we didn’t get to advance to the national finals, but it was awesome to play on Einstein.

It was kind of funny. On Einstein, there were me, Chris and Kim from 177. Corey from 25, and Tom and Matt from 195. Fifteen thousand people were watching the six of us, all of whom had hung out several times in the previous few weeks. Small world, eh?

I also got to talk to lots of people from other teams who I was meeting for the first time in real life or never get to see because they are far away. I won a t-shirt at the webhug (although only XL’s were left) and got everyone to sign it. I talked to the Olin student representatives at Scholarship Row and a few other acceptees and some friends of other acceptees. It was pretty cool, and all of the engineers are convinced I have a posse since people kept coming to the pit and asking where I was.

So this year’s robotics season concludes with three champion trophies. At the start of the year I wrote in my college essays how amazing it would be to even get to the nationals and compete with the best teams in the country. I wound up getting to be the base driver for the robot, and not only winning a regional to qualify us for nationals, winning TWO regionals, qualifying for nationals, and then winning our division!

This year was pretty much “How to Win With Worse Robots (and Strategy!)”. Massive props to our strategy, scouting, and alliance selection teams. They pretty much laid the groundwork for us to win anything. The robot that the rest of the team delivered was solid, and the drivetrain was nothing short of amazing. It’s too bad we couldn’t go all the way, but we had the best season we’ve ever had. In no way am I disappointed. Next year I get to mentor! Yay!