After spending all of Wednesday roaming around the parks in Disney, the 151 pit crew was ready and full of high hopes for Low Rider. We unpacked the crate and did a functional check with all systems performing perfectly. We did very well in our practice rounds and balanced several times with both one and two goals. We left the day with a great feeling about the upcoming competition.
Low rider had 6 of its 8 elimination rounds on Friday. The robot performed very well, performing tasks from balancing one or two goals, being the ramp rat while others balanced or just low riding and sitting in the end zone. Team 151 only let our alliance down once during the day, we were attempting to balance on Einstein during our second match, and the treads on the robot failed and we were unable to get up the bridge. After a quick pit change, the rest of the competition went smoothly. We finished the day ranked 22 out of 82 with high hopes for the next day.
The second day of competition turned out to be disappointing to team 151, we had our last two matches and through no fault of Low rider we received very low scores and finished the elimination rounds a respectable 48 out of 82. The alliance pickings came and went and left Low Rider to sit and watch the finals from the sidelines. We cheered on the Cheesy Poofs, the champs from our division and watched them make it all the way to the last match at nationals, where they were defeated. Congratulations Cheesy poofs on a great year. We also cheered on Chief Delphi, Chaos, and Aces High our partners from regionals all of which made the finals. At the awards ceremony Team 151 was honored with the honorable mention for Technical Merit in the Use of Information in Animation. We are very proud of our animation team. Overall it was a great year for Team 151. It was the first year in a while that we managed to seed at our regional, and win an award on the national level.
In the next few months we will be changing the gearing on Low Rider to squeeze more speed for the summer competitions, and hopefully touring the Junior highs to boost membership for next year.