Our team’s first regional of the 2022 season was the Greater Pittsburgh Regional (GPR), March 17-19, 2022; it was three jam packed days of high spirit and competitiveness.
On day one of competition, there were 42 practice matches, where we participated in five of them. This was a great way to ease our team into the coming days of the qualification matches. Throughout day one, we did well with getting as much cargo as we could into the lower hub, as well as hang when we got the opportunity. We did have to replace the intake, thus we did not participate in our last practice match. Also on day 1 we hosted our annual FIRST Ladies meetup. This year we featured a panel of women in STEM from FRC teams 117, 3054, 4085, and 7460.
Continuing on to day two of competition, we had 8 qualification matches. Even though we lost most of them, that did not bring any of us down. Our robot was functioning to what we had it designed to do and for what our goal was, which includes shooting efficiently in the lower hub and hanging on the mid rung. On day 2 the chairman’s team did their presentation at 8 am and Aria had her Dean’s List interview near the end of the day. Plus Grace received a “Safety Star” award!
First thing on day 3 was Samhita’s Dean’s List interview followed by three more qualifying matches; we were still performing to the best of what our robot could do, which is amazing. However, since our rank was not high at the end of qualifying matches, 40th of 47, we did not become an alliance captain. We also did not get picked to be part of one of the qualifying alliances. This made us rethink how our robot functions and how to get it to be more competitive. Thus, before Buckeye, we want to make adjustments and changes to make the robot more competitive, such as shooting in the high hub and hanging on the high bar.
Besides the robot, our Chairman’s team did such a great job presenting to the judges, and our two Dean’s List nominees were awesome in their interviews. Although we did not win Chairman’s and none of our Dean’s List nominees became finalists, big news was that we won the Engineering Inspiration Award, which automatically qualifies our team for Worlds. So, we will be going to Worlds in Houston in April!!
