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| Chief William Malone: Driver for the Robotics Team |
Please read Mr. DeDe's recollection of day 3 of their experience below:
Day
3 (7am -6pm)
On
Day 3 the second day of qualifications for the playoffs and the playoffs that
evening, we would suffer some losses but even in those losses our “legend”
continued. In one legendary match, we were partnered with team 829 our mentor
team. They had blown a transmission and we had to help knock them onto the
pyramid as they couldn't drive. In the process taking damage to our robot but
working together to win. In another match our final match before the playoffs
we faced the Mighty Hawaiian team again and we were determined to win. Mr. L
wanted to play it safe and score our 10 points and get into the playoffs but
our driver team said no and told me they wanted to play to win and defeat
Hawaii. I had to disregard Mr. L’s instructions and yells to get on the pyramid
– which I pretended to not hear and go with the kids as I too wanted to
defeat Hawaii. Hawaii had been scoring over 100 points shooting the
Frisbee alone in each match. In this epic match up we went toe to toe with the
Hawaiian alliance “initially” winning 34 to 31 at the end of regulation. It was
in this match up that we solidified our status no matter how the competition
went. We held Mighty Hawaii to 31 points and we nearly won. At the end of the
match each robot has to climb a pyramid to get points. We were ready to climb
which would have earned our team 10 points. This would have made our score 43,
but we knew that the Hawaiian alliance would have two climbers so their score
would be 51. One of our partner teams got stuck in their climb. Our driver
drove over to their robot and spent almost a minute trying to lift them onto
the pyramid. They were successful but in the process we sustained damage to our
robot. As we attempted to climb ourselves we were successful except for the
fact that our bumper broke off and hung down from our robot and barely touched
the ground as the horn sounded and took away our 10 points. We would lose the
match 51 to 43 but everyone had seen that we were not afraid of Hawaii
(literally everyone was) and that we were willing to help our teammates out.
We
would end the day as the number 12 ranked team heading into the playoffs. The
top 8 teams in the competition had the right to choose who they wanted to be a
part of their three team alliance for the playoffs. We were the first
non-top 8 team picked to be on an alliance and we joined the 8th
seeded team on their alliance. To put this in perspective our mentor team 829
and literally everyone there congratulated us, as no rookie team had ever been
picked. Team 829 who has a $35,000.00 robotics budget said it took them 5 years
to get picked for the playoffs. We were so excited because honestly in
the playoffs if you are outside of the top 8 you may not get picked to play in
the playoffs as so many other teams found out.
In
the playoffs we were seeded against the Hawaiian Alliance (which featured
Hawaii the number 1 seed, Carmel the number 2 seed, and team 1747 who had the
most physically powerful robot in the competition). Honestly they had the
perfect alliance – two great scoring robots and an incredible defender. Our
alliance had one good scoring team and two defensive robots. We came out in the
playoffs and gave them everything we had only to fall in the quarterfinals. Our
competition was over and we finally had a chance to sit back and think about
what he had done.
