State Tournament 2/8/14

Opening Ceremonies

           We almost died of laughter. It was a synchronized dance to ‘What Does The Fox Say?’ They did a VERY good job, in my opinion, and it kind of made you want to start crying… with joy.

 

Technical Judging

            We did well, didn’t miss anything we had planned to talk about. We ran our missions and showed them our robot/attachments. The judge looked very interested in each thing we did and even wanted to try some of the things himself (to see the easiness of attaching the base).

 

 

Robot Run #1

            This. Did. Not. Go. Well. We ended up scoring around 40 points… if that says anything. Ambulance had decided to not work today, and our last mission (worth 270) took a turn for the worst (literally).

 

Project Judging

            We performed our skit without blanking on lines (like we had the night before at a mock-judging session). Although, for the judging part, things didn’t go as planned. We had planned to do a tutorial, but our judge post-poned it. A lot of the questions were curve balls, but we still did good.

 

Robot Run #2

            Improved our score by 100! (Still, very bad.)

 

Core Values Judging

            The activity went really well! We all participated and had a lot of fun.

 

Robot Run #3

            This was our last chance. We had to do it! This made us even more stressed. Sabriyah gave Amy and I advice to imagine everyone was wearing pajamas, and the whole tournament was just a casual practice that didn’t matter. It was actually quite soothing. So, as the robot entered the red zone (again, carrying TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY POINTS) at the last second (legit, the clock was at ‘0.6 seconds left’), over all of the screaming, cheering, and all that other good stuff, I yelled to Sabriyah, “WE’RE IN OUR PAJAMAS!” Her advice had worked, so therefore I recommend you to do the same if ever in a stressful situation. We scored a 360 (same degrees as a circle, so we thought it had to do with the fact that our math teacher was watching us this round). It could’ve been better, but it also could’ve been a lot worse.

 

Callbacks

            Drum roll, please! We got 5 callbacks!!! It seemed like a dream. Championship, Research, Core Values, Technical Design, and Programming! We were a lot more polished and serious (well, I wouldn’t go that far) for these than the earlier sessions. Well, except for Core Values. We ended up blasting Super Mario Galaxy and dancing our feet off. Also, Technical was pretty interesting since I was wearing my cow costume.

 

Head to Head

            We got about 380 for the first round, which had us very happy! The second round… that’s a different story. We started off, our missions working perfectly, until we got to Ambulance. We needed it to work, so we ended up replaying it about 3 times. That meant we had to skip delivering the truck, TanTowers, and GreyTowers. All to run the sleigh… which didn’t even work!

 

Awards Ceremony

            “Core Values, 2^nd place… Ponytail Posse” We were all really excited, and I was glad they had thought we had fun and had good teamwork.

 

 

 

 

 

“Programming, 1^st Place… Ponytail Posse” I was really surprised, picturing our programs and wondering what other teams’ had looked like.

 

 

 

 

 

“2^nd Place, Champions Award, going to California… PONYTAIL POSSE!!!” What!? I had told myself I wasn’t going to scream anymore because Amy, Rose, and I had already done plenty of that and now we all had soar throats, but we screamed the loudest we had all day when we heard our name. AUGH!!! It’s hard to believe (not that we didn’t work hard, we did. It’s just weird to think that it finally happened, after dreaming about it for so long).

 

 

“1^st Place, competing in Canada… Height Differential!” Now we wouldn’t have to feel guilty!! Lol.