–Middleton Madness Tournament–
On October 3rd, 2011 the Robo-Warriors ventured into enemy territory for our first qualifier for the year. The team was both exciting and nervous for this tournament. For many members of the team it was their first competition and they seemed to be quite ecstatic. Sadly this vibrant enthusiasm died before stepping into the arena. However the determination of our team would soon rule the day, even if the score would fail to show it.
The computer blue screened while loading our program. The competition seemed lost, and everyone feared the worst. Thankfully, due to our team’s resilience and quick thinking, Justin (one of the captains) took to fixing the crashed hard drive. His efforts worked within a matter of minutes. The first round was somewhat successful, although, even with our partner, our alliance failed to secure a win. The next round was another decent round for our robot; however, our alliance partner caused an 80 point penalty which led to our opponent’s win.
Although we had yet to win a round we kept our heads high and continually attempted to improve the functionality of our BOT. The 3rd through 5th rounds went much worse for the team; everything that could have gone wrong continually proved itself. We lost all three rounds in a relatively short amount of time, so there was no good way for the team to put our minds together to fix the momentous problems that we had encountered. Finally, the 5th round was over and we had several rounds to prepare for the final match. Once the last match come up the team opted to have Jesse drive the bot. As an inexperienced member of the team he was quite nervous, but the team was completely supportive and he sauntered to the arena, leaving the rest of the team in the spectator stands. He proved himself to be a competent driver that day, driving with both poise and style. Sadly, the last round we were outmatched by, in the team’s opinion, a completely worthy set of opponents.
The team was distraught over the challenges we encountered at Middleton, but the competition wasn’t a complete loss. We learned much from our first tournament, such as, to never give up and to play with confidence in our robot. The Robo-Warriors have many outstanding young men and women, and without these dedicated individuals, the team would quickly dissolve. We have the courage and ingenuity to do great things this season, and with any luck, our next competition will go more our way. Veni Vedi Didici!