March 5, 2011
Day 3 of the New Jersey Regional
Your heart still races when you think of it.
The last day of the competition dawned clear and blue. No clouds marred the skies or your mind as you waited for the doors to open to the arena.
"Two minutes!"
The words whispered over the sea of heads, as excited as if you were attending a concert or movie premiere. Students nervously gripped their laptops and monkey wrenches as buses crowded the lot. You arrived extra early this morning, just so you could hold a position immediately outside the doors. So when they finally opened, you were the first to bound into the virtually empty pit.
Relaxing takes effort.
A preliminary test of the robot revealed a huge problem: the elevator wasn't working. Frantic, you tested and retested wires until someone, anyone, noticed your distress. To your rescue came a face you already knew: a man who had helped you before but officially mentored your next alliance partner. Mike Reffler came to the rescue with his battalion of tips and tricks, and just in time to place the robot on the field for the opening match, it was working.
"Go! Go! Go!"
You dashed to the field and quickly strategized with your alliance, the two most competent teams at the regional: Team Mercury, 1089 (finalist) and the Pascack Pioneers, 1676 (champion).
Recovering takes time.
The robot raced to place the tubes: one logo per robot, this match. The opposing alliance was overwhelmed as all three red-bumpered bots whipped back and forth across the field.
Your robot performed backwards: blue first, then white, then red. But you completed a logo. By god, you completed a logo! Cheers burst forth from the audience.
Soon there were three completed logos on your wall and the fifteen second warning galloped across the stadium. Your teammates raced to their poles, where their deployment systems released their mini-bots quickly and easily. The opposing alliance had a mini-bot as well, so your alliance's robots win first and third place. Plus forty points!
The echoes of the cheers will never fade.
The final buzzer screamed and the crowd erupted into chaos. You rushed to remove your robot from the field, then you and your fellow drivers hightailed it to the pit-side scoreboard. The voice of the announcer echoed across the field:
"Highest score so far of the New Jersey Regional!"
But around you, your teammates were booing. You glanced around — looked back at the board — but —
"Wait!" Tyler said. "We were red!"
And the drivers exploded into cheers, too ecstatic to process their blunder.
You won.
93-17.
First match of the day.
It would be a good day.
That first match pushed us into second place in the regional. For a while, we remained in the top eight, until our last two matches resulted in losses. Still, we ranked number 14 overall by the end of the qualifying rounds. And so the quarter finals came, and the top 8 teams were invited to the field to choose their alliance mates. Imagine our shock when the last team to be called for alliance-forming was Team 2191. All the other alliance captains had chosen other teams of the top 8, so we had been gradually bumped up.
Our alliance mates were teams 181 and 2199.
We lasted the first round before we were disqualified by Team 1676's alliance (which was unbeaten). Still, our team was ecstatic to have progressed so far in the competition, especially after last year's dismal performance. Our seniors especially were euphoric for finally having experienced a successful year.
Sunny: "Have you ever seen The Pursuit of Happiness? You know that scene at the end where Will Smith is walking down the street and says, ' This is true happiness'? That's what I just felt."
Matt: (Wednesday after the competition) "When I was rushing around just now, I felt like I was at the competition, in the pits, again."
"Is that good or bad?"
"I haven't decided yet."
