CMS Robotics

Our biggest day had finally arrived; it was December 12, our regional competition! After an hour long drive to Canton, everyone was ready to fall asleep despite the excitement and anticipation hanging in the air. Our car finally pulls up to the familiar grey building of the Canton Day School. Several other vehicles were slowly circling the rain-flooded parking lot when we pulled in, and I noticed several team members with bright shirts spray-dying their hair on a strip of grass outside the double glass doors.

A minivan pulls into the parking spot next to ours; it’s another member of our team! I jump out and we meet with excited squeals, hugging each other and jumping up and down in unison. We are separated by force when our parents ask us to carry assorted props and cookies into the massive grey building before us. Everyone pours through the open doors and heads towards the sign-in desk as a bobbing, cheering sea of purple and gold.

We receive our pit area passes and head back to our designated area to set up. Our diminutive group was the first of our team to arrive, so we unloaded our display board and banner to pin to the table. I set out a tray of school bus-shaped sugar cookies with our team number on them for other teams to take just as more of our team arrives. The pit room is becoming more crowded by the minute, and everybody is excited!

Reserving our times for practicing with the robot was our next priority. The building/programming team had to practice running the program on the robot so that they could work out any kinks in the programming. Two other team members and I decided to go and try to get to know some of the other teams better. We put on neon yellow fedoras, grabbed a tray of cookies and set out on our mission. Judges stalk around the pit areas like vultures, observing everybody, on the hunt for team members and mentors showing gracious professionalism (gracious professionalism is when a team makes a clear effort towards helping other people at the competition).

It wasn’t long before it was time for the opening ceremony. All of the parents got to see the parade of the teams introduced, and then there were several short speeches before everyone was dismissed to begin our judging.

The Lightning Bots were full of enthusiasm as we headed for our first challenge: our research presentation! We follow one of the guides into a room in front of a table of judges. After setting up and acting out our skit the judges asked us a series of questions, and we were then dismissed. The team returned to the pit area and reserved some practice times for the robot. In another half hour we returned to another room of judges to give our robot’s presentation, and we bounced in excitedly. Half of the team stood holding a banner that had our program printed on it, and the judges asked all of us questions about the processes of our programming and designing the robot. When we were dismissed we headed back once again to the pits.

A few of my other team member offered to go and hand out some more of our cookies to other teams, so we set out to kill some time before our final challenge. We were on our way down the hallway when we noticed a judge floating around and offered him a cookie. He kindly declined, but instead gave each of us pins that said “Gracious Professionalism” on them! The three of us hurried back to our pit and showed our coaches, who were ecstatic! We gave the tray of cookies to another group of members on our team so that they could try to get pins as well. Eventually everyone had to be rounded back up; it was time for our teamwork challenge!

The team headed back to the hallway of judging rooms once more, ready for whatever they had waiting for us. Our task was to set up a structure of dominos that had at least four sections to it. Our teamwork score was the highest one we received, only missing one point off of the whole two-and-a-half page grading sheet. After our dismissal the team headed back to our pit to wait for our first duel with the robot.

It was a short wait before our team was called for our first match. Two and a half anxious minutes later, our robot had scored at twelfth place of about two dozen teams competing, which was amazing! Our second round was less than twenty minutes later, and we scored so high that we moved up to fifth place! Our coaches and several parents took a team picture, and then everyone split up to go and eat lunch.

With our stomachs satisfied, our final duel awaited us. Something went wrong with the robot, and we unfortunately scored very low. However, it didn’t matter as much because only the highest score is used, so we remained in fifth place for the rest of the matches! At last, everyone went back to the pits and waited for the closing ceremonies.

Thirty minutes later everyone was back in the match area once again, waiting nervously for the judges to announce the winners. Our team didn’t make it to state and didn’t get a trophy, but we did in a way get an award. At the end of the ceremony, the judges asked for anyone who received a gracious professionalism pin to stand up; we were the only team that had practically every member standing!

We went home with smiles and memories, and medals to help remember what the true meaning of FIRST is: to learn and innovate and not quit if something isn’t working the way you want it to.

Written by Sarah Hochadel, FLL Team Member

‘08 Team

‘07 Team