Stormgears will be moving onwards from here to Boston for our next District Event! We'll see you guys there!

As you may know, taking the Engineering Inspiration award automatically qualifies us for the District Championships in Hartford, CT. We'll be using the event for practice and for testing out some of our latest changes, so stay tuned!

Hey!

Let's go over what happened this weekend:

Friday: I wasn't there, but our robot apparently failed inspection a few times; Regardless our pit was set up, and we would eventually be allowed to compete.

Saturday: The big day! After getting inspected, we began our qualification rounds, going 0-2 early on before finally picking up our first win. We would end the day 3-6 in wins/losses, in rank 21-22. Many of these rounds were lost by 2 or 3 points, and our robot wasn't even entirely functional. Major problems throughout the day hampered our performance and had to be ironed out. 
Our big win, however, came in our judging. Judges who came to our pit (which stood out from most of the others) were greatly impressed by what we had to say. Great job to all those who spoke to them and those who created the displays in our pit.

Finally, we were also shadowed by a team we were mentoring for this season, rookie team 5962 perSEVERE from Merrimack Valley, who will be competing soon in their first competition.

Sunday: Kicking into high gear, we were able to finally get our shooter working and our performance improved tremendously, ensuring that we ended Qualifiers with another win under our belt, for an overall record of 4-8, in rank 23 (just above that all important 24th rank)

After, we became 2nd pick to the 3rd seed alliance, led by CHAOS 131 and joined by Schrodinger's Cat 3958. In the quarter finals, we lost (0-2) to the alliance seeded 6th. That alliance would continue to win the entire tournament, toppling the seemingly unstoppable 1st seed in the finals.  

We were also visited by more judges.

In awards, as I'm sure you know by now, we took the award we were hoping for: Engineering Inspiration, which instantly qualifies us for the District Championships in Hartford, CT.

Stormgears have been working towards the goal of the World Championship two years in a row for the entire preseason. The only thing to get done now is the robot. So, the phase of prototyping, designing, and strategizing has begun. With increased manpower from last season, Stormgears are now able to work on several other side-projects concurrently, whether it's designing an awesome design for our team standard or a button board to control our robot. We hope to create a competitive robot and an even better team after this season, and we are well on our way.

Here's to great success!
-MJ