It was a full breakfast room this morning at 6:30 AM as two FRC teams tried to eat a good meal before a long and competitive day. 
We arrived to the competition and took our place in line behind our friends 1114, 2056 and 610. Team 188 followed quickly behind us, and together we ensured that today the mad rush was a little less pushy.
Everyone is so excited to get started in the morning….some of our grade 9 students were quite surprised to be waking up before 6AM on a weekend morning while on a school trip!
We cheered on our team with all our might!
And while competition continued on the field, repairs (both small and large) happened in the pit. 
Our matches this morning were not as successful as most of the ones yesterday. We ended the qualification rounds with a 5-3-1 record, and in 16th place at the start of alliance selection.
We were selected by the 5th alliance captain, team 1241 and joined by team 2626 to form an alliance for the elimination matches. 
We worked out a strategy with our alliance partners and developed a game plan over lunch.
Congratulations to Liam for winning a bag of chocolate for guessing how much was in a jar at the social event last night!
During the elimination rounds the game plan changes from earning coopertition points using the middle bridge with your opposing alliance member to earning extra points for getting an entire alliance onto the bridge. 3 robots on the bridge barely fit, but we saw it a few times. Here’s team 1075, team 548 and team 4307 with a triple balance in the quarter finals…
….and here’s our friends team 610, team 188 and team 3360 who balanced like this for much of the afternoon!
We were not so lucky with our end game balancing act. We could usually get 2 robots on, but this time, the clock stopped with our partner half off. We were eliminated in quarter final play.
Our team continued to watch the rest of the drama unfold as the semis and finals progressed. 
Part of our team returned to the pit to clean up and pack all of our belongings. When in the pit, we’re super safe. Here’s Michelle, dressed in her purple, wearing her proper safety attire!
We’d like to thank our sponsors for all that they’ve done for us, and all of the support that they gave leading up to the competition. We would not be here without the financial backing, the material donations and the time and energy spent making our team what it is.
As we were cleaning up our pit area we got to know some new friends from team 2056. It’s a small world when we realize that our purple and blue families intersect with the Cyberfalcons! FIRST is great for joining individual teams together as families, and creating networks of teams among communities. 
Even though we were eliminated from play, we continued to dance up a storm!
We danced in the stands…and we danced on the sidelines with a few other teams. 
We watched as the finals progressed….it was a grudge match between an alliance of 1114 and 2056 facing an alliance of 610 and 188. We know these teams well–we meet them in line for the doors to open each morning! Some of our mentors were once part of these teams, and we cheer them on and watch in awe at the things their robots can do.
At the end of the competition, awards are given out to many teams. Many teams qualified to go to championships from this regional. Many congratulations and standing ovations were given to the following:
Team 1114: Chairman’s Award
Team 1114, Team 2052, Team 1219: Regional winners
Team 4334: Rookie All Star Award
and…..drum roll please…..TEAM 2809 for Engineering Inspiration!
“The Engineering Inspiration Award celebrates a team’s outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers, both within their school and their community. Criteria include: the extent and inventiveness of the team’s efforts to recruit students to engineering, the extent and effectiveness of the team’s community outreach efforts, and the measurable success of those efforts. This is the second highest team award FIRST bestows.
Unlike the Chairman’s Award, the Engineering Inspiration Award has no formal submission nor presentation to the judges. In fact, many teams who do not submit for the Chairman’s Award win the Engineering Inspiration. The judges get their information from other teams, students and mentors, and robot performance.”
We were caught very much off guard with this award, and some of us did not realize that this means we’re going to the Championships in St. Louis.
K-Bots: Be sure you have passports! Get lots of sleep tonight because the work will continue very soon. Keep checking your email over march break.
Our scouts set off at 6:45AM to hold our spot in line. We are usually one of the first 5 teams to arrive. Our friends 1114, 2056, 188 and 610 were there before we were. They must have left SO early!
After an hour’s wait, the doors were opened, and we joined the 
Everyone was thrilled to be at competition. Our parent mentors thought it was just like Christmas morning–they were too excited to sleep last night!
Our good buddy James is the M.C. for this competition. He’s doing a really good job announcing all of the teams as they play their matches.
We’ve got lots of friends in the stands. Our youngest scout came wearing an historic GPA! 
While scouts worked hard saving space in the stands, the pit crew and drive team worked hard in the pit to prepare our robot, adjust programming, and get ready to talk to the judges….
….who came to talk to our pit a lot! By the end of the day judges were spotted everywhere with our little knitted hat pins.
We had an exciting day of matches. We shot and scored in autonomous and in tele-op, and we even balanced a bridge with a dragon-bot!
Our bridge tipper had a bit of an injury….but after a little surgery we feel that it will make a fine recovery.
We had some conversations with mentors who couldn’t make it to competition to keep them up to speed with the developments. We know that there are lots of people who are watching the webcasts from home. Thanks for all of your support!
As the matches progressed throughout the day we ended up in 3rd place at one time.
By the end of the day, we were in 4th place and optimistic for things to come tomorrow.
During the awards ceremony we were excited to receive the “Engineering Excellence Award sponsored by Delphi” for the modular design of our components and our diagnostic ability with our circuits and sensors.
We are bringing home a trophy for our display case!
After the competition was done for the day we had a great meal and lots of fun at the social event. We enjoy eating together, but it was nice to meet some new people too.
Some of us are particularly good at making new friends. “It all starts with a hug”-Sam, grade 10.
Our team left the social a bit early to prepare for our scouting meeting. We have the entire breakfast room to ourselves. We put all of our information from the day’s scouting into a database, and then projected the stats on the wall. We have to create a list of robots we want to work with tomorrow in case we end up as an alliance captain and have to choose our partners.
What a day it was! We played two games this morning, and ended up in a great spot before alliance selection. Our minibot was still giving us trouble, but we kept working hard to perfect the deployment. Unfortunately it never made it up the pole in a match.
During alliance selection we were assured a spot as a captain, but were selected by the fourth alliance captain team 1305. We invited team 3541 to join us on our alliance.
Awards are given out after the competition ends. Before awards, a prize was drawn from all of the students who filled out an online evaluation of the competition. We were so excited that a K-bot won! Congratulations Jacob. We know you will enjoy your new awesome laptop!
The 
Between matches, our robot gets worked on by our expert pit crew. It’s pretty crowded and busy in there. Judges and safety officials, robots, mentors, students, families and friends are all milling about, looking around, repairing robots, changing batteries, lining up for matches, strategizing with alliances etc. The pit is a fun place to visit, specially when the robot is working well.
This morning our Chairman’s team did a great job with their presentation. They explained to judges all about what we do that makes our team special, how we work to get others interested in science and technology, and how our team is building a strong foundation for the future.
Our excellent lunch plan was a success today. Thanks to Gord for organizing the sandwich run! We had a tailgate party in the parking lot.
Our robot was one of the earliest on the field. We passed inspection quickly, and have been fine tuning programming for autonomous mode and attaching our new minibot deployment system.
We vastly improved our lunch time routine. This year we offered three restaurant choices, and got cash in advance, then brought a marker to label everyone’s sandwich/burger order with their name so we could distribute them with minimal chaos.
The afternoon proved interesting: we improved our minibot deployment once again. We dealt with some pneumatic leaks, and we had plenty of knitting lessons in the stands!
Our big purple family had dinner together at Swiss Chalet tonight. We’ve never had a reservation for 48 before! It was lots of fun–we celebrated RJ’s birthday with a song and a sundae complete with candle.
Pits open tomorrow at 8AM. Stay tuned to the webcast to see us in action!
Today we gathered after school to load all of our robotics equipment, the pit and the robot into a van. We’re so thankful to have such accommodating parents who will not only loan out their vehicles to transport our gear, but also help out by providing invaluable van-loading expertise.
We’re all getting a good night sleep tonight. Some of us are hitting the road early to arrive and set up the pit at 7:30AM. Our grade 10s have a busy day writing the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test in the morning, and then heading to GTR in the afternoon.
Stay tuned for further updates this weekend!
We made good use of the printer, laminator and paper cutter today! Precision work and attention to detail are key when preparing visuals for our Chairman’s presentation.
