Columbia was a lot of fun. Even though we were the only rookie team there we finished up in the middle of the pack. Cat 5 made it as far as the quarterfinals before being eliminated.
Our drivers and coach (Dustin, Steven & Evan) worked well with our alliance partners; sometimes hanging tubes and sometimes playing defense. They were great at blocking and generally harassing the powerhouse teams, limiting their scoring ability. Rasaun (from the Multimedia Team) was selected as our human player because he's tall. As the day wore on he was flinging tubes further & further down the field.
Unfortunately we still weren't able to deploy our MiniBot in competition, after deploying it 5 times in a row here at Bosch. There were various problems (driver error, MiniBot bouncing off pole, deployment arm jamming), but we weren't alone; most teams, including 342, had problems deploying their MiniBots. We never saw more than 2 deploy in a match; usually it was only 1 or none. During our last match the MiniBot fell off and was ground into the carpet by our opponents and allies. It's nickname is now "Roadkill".
Overall the students had a good time and their enthusiasm was very high. They worked together to solve problems, mostly without help from the mentors. We didn't bring back the trophy, but if our main goal was to get the new students excited about FRC, we had tremendous success.
