This past week, the team has been working harder than ever. With a fueled passion from the experiences of Mount Vernon, many students have dedicated their entire life after school to robotics. Just yesterday, many students stayed all the way until 9 PM, and even still some students to 10 PM. The amount of effort the team is putting in this week is tremendous, and is absolutely creating the progress we need to be successful at our home event.
The new claw that we have constructed, which is a series of spikes with spring force, has been constructed, and is currently being tested on the practice robot. The mechanism is working wonderfully, and it is looking promising. The code has also been adjusted, to make the driving more smooth and manageable for our drivers. This way, the elite driving team we already have can be even better. We also have many miscellaneous processes going on, such as a Safety Board being constructed for our pit that will work to better organize safety materials, pit designers constructing parts of the pit, drive tests and practice, button making (we have a new design that matches our orange theme and shirt design!), and even video editing. Despite being out of the build season, the team couldn't be more busy. And despite past patterns, we couldn't be more productive! It's WONDERFUL! Stunning productivity, Team Pronto! (lol oxymorons. i hope that's an oxymoron) Marie Antointote was unveiled at the Mount Vernon event in which she unleashed all her carnage upon the Mount Vernonites...! Which was akin to the amount of carnage that a sleeping dragon has. But! BUT! Y'know, we did a lot of good things. 'Cause we are still Team Pronto. It's about the people, and the ideas. Not the pesky humans and the follies of man such as wanting to win and stuff.... Not like we don't want that... but yes, we cannot get stuck in the past. We will move towards victory! So now the recap.
A team of fancy schmancy people went up to Mount Vernon after school on Friday to transport the robot and get it through inspection. Reportedly, we had an extremely quick inspection, (45 minutes!!!) and the robot was set for competition! On a Friday morning full of many carpools, the team went down to Mount Vernon and the fun officially started. Lots of stuff had to happen first: like the setting up of the pits, the distribution of new shirts, and the distribution of safety glasses. Because as you know, the Safty Mann needs us to be safe. We must heed the voice of Safty Mann. We must heed the voice of God. (Safty Mann, Alex Krantz, actually ended up being our team's winner! Yay Alex!) Then, the moment that we have been waiting for all through the six weeks, and the post-build-season... Our first match. It will go down in history, and not because Marie has a red nose, or whatever. Our first alliance was with CPR 3663, and CyberKnights 4911, both of which were absolutely amazing teams. Honestly, I'm starting to idolize them. So we ended up getting our highest game score of the competition, which was over 100!! Woo hoo! ...But then things just went downhill from there! :( Even though our robot was made quite well (nothing broke, and it was organized quite well) the design of the robot and program seemed to be falling short in terms of play. While many teams were stacking 3-6 high towers, Marie was struggling to stack even two, or even one... However, our miraculous drive team stood up to the challenge, and performed with flying colors. Despite our rank dropping increasingly faster, the drive teams did not drop in determination. And for the first time in history, one of our drive teams was completely made up of girls!!! THAT IS AMAZING. We never have enough girls for a drive team! And guess what? Apparently, this is the time its happened in FRC with a co-ed school. Yeah, Team Pronto is paving the way for a better future. (The drive team was made up of Kate Parkinson, the driver of the robot, Carly Krantz, the programmer, Anna Soper, the human player, and Olivia Anderson, the strategist.) Rock on! We still need a name for their team too. Something like... the Powerpuff Girls? I really like the Powerpuff Girls. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? They could each be one of the turtles! Ahhhh!!!! Or maybe -- okay, well, perhaps we don't need to have a name for them. But they're great. Other than the action on the field, lots of good stuff happened in the pits. Other than our outstanding Safty Mann who was awarded the Safety Star, many other team members talked to judges about our robot design, imagery of our team, and the business plan that Jafar wrote. All of them answered the questions with the utmost detail, and of course, Alex's iconic conversation starter, "let me start at the beginning." They all represented Team Pronto well, and with grace. Our pit design also debuted at this event, and it ended up being extremely tall and looked kind of like a carnival tent. Nonetheless, it was quite amazing, but the team has deemed it much too tedious and dangerous for pit purposes. (we are currently working on a new design, which will be chock full of ORANGE.) Ultimately, our team ended at 27th out of 30 teams. Perhaps we didn't do so well, but we are eternally grateful for the experience. Currently, during this week before the Shorewood Event this weekend, we are refining not only our driving, program, and robot design, but our pit, and team spirit as well. Our first competition will serve as a lesson we won't forget, and at Shorewood we will no doubt flourish and succeed in the ways we want to. Perhaps we won't do as well as we want, or we'll be "top tier trash," like our goal is. But whatever happens, we'll have fun. It's my senior year for gosh sakes, *sniff sniff.* We're gonna make this great. 'Cause that's how we roll. Also, shoutout to the alliance that ended up winning: Skunkworks 1983, IRS 1319, and the Mountaineers 4654. And our wonderful runner-ups: 3663 CPR, 4911 CyberKnights, and 5784 Adna Pirates (woo-hoo for the North Seattle teams!). Great show, teams. Excellent job, Team Pronto, and continue to have the drive of a million horses! Well, this is quite long overdue.
...but anyway... Help us welcome two new robots into our family: Ropes Pierre (our practice robot) and Marie Antointote (our competition robot)! Our build season ended splendidly without trouble, and Marie is safely tucked away in her crate. She's hibernating... waiting for the battle... waiting to serve the cake full of kick-buttery. Meanwhile, the team is continuing to prepare our human bodies for the competition, putting things together such as a new pit design, buttons, practicing driving with Ropes Pierre, programming autonomous code... Team Pronto is far from hibernation! As our first competition of the year looms ever closer (next weekend), we not only prepare our physical bodies, but also our minds. We must ready ourselves for the stress, the competition, and for war. War I say! (Though no matter how well we do, we will al be winners. Yay!!! :D) WAAGGGGHHHHHH (war cry), Team Pronto! |