Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Robotics Competition

Sunday was the competition against the competition board and ten other teams. The team worked really hard leading up to it and that day they had a very solid performance for a first year team. It was wonderful!

We had a parent who was able to take our practice table to the site so the boys could keep working at it. We started from ground zero in mid-September with the team and they could use all the extra time they could get!


We didn't use any of the robot's sensors and I know next year they will be on that.

Dan and I were the coaches- I took care of administrative, financial support gathering, the poster and research portion, and general crowd control. While Dan was in charge of technical instruction and motivation and communication with parents. Here he is doing what he did best on Sunday- keeping our team on time! We all had the yellow shirts (ok I was in charge of acquiring shirts as well- more administrative type work). The kids had their names and Dan and I had Coach on there. Our team sponsors were the CNF at Cornell and Arleo Eye Associates. Thanks sponsors!


The guys wait outside the competition ring for their next run.

More practice...
The team won the TEAM SPIRIT AWARD which was really terrific. They earned it! They were quick to encourage each other that day and they cheered on other teams. I think we were the loudest ones there.

We placed 4th or 5th overall out of 11 teams which was nothing short of amazing! The team is excited to work on robot skills next semester in co-op and Dan and I are already planning some robot time over the winter between co-op sessions. The boys can hardly wait.

If we can get more sponsors, we may be able to have a second team. We've been trying for YEARS to get a team off the ground so this is just really exciting for us. The parents are jazzed and very supportive which was really nice because they needed to agree to extra practice (Wednesdays and Saturdays for weeks) toward the end- not to mention the 12:30 to 8 pm day on Sunday.

The result was well worth our effort for the kids. If you are interested in starting up a LEGO FIRST team check out this website for information.

5 comments:

Kylie said...

Congrats, what fun. My son would go ape if we started this, must look into it further for what happens here in Oz.

kim said...

Go Team!! That's great.

Fairly local said...

That is nice that they were so encouraging. It sounds like it was very successful.

Nikki said...

Hi Heather,
Just visiting from the homeschool blog awards. I am really enjoy your blog . :) Great organization gives me some ideas for my blog in the way of organizing catagories.

Nikki
www.Angelsofheart.com

Sprittibee said...

awesome! My son competed in Robofest and we love robotics!