WORLDS!
Ofter qualifying for 2022 Worlds at both GPR and Buckeye, our team quickly made plans to travel to Houston -for our robot and for our team. Generally the team reserves a bus for team trips, but Houston is far enough away from Pittsburgh (more than 1300 miles) that we arranged to fly. To get to Houston, the team split into two groups, where some members, mentors, and chaperones flew on Tuesday, April 19th, and the rest flew on Wednesday, April 20th. The group that left on Tuesday got to go to NASA’s Johnson Space Center that day, which is an awesome educational, specifically STEM, experience.
When the Wednesday group landed in Houston, the entire team went met at the George R. Brown Convention Center, which was where FIRST Championships/Worlds was being held. Out of the 6 divisions (Turing, Hopper, Roebling, Galileo, Newton, and Carver), our team was part of Galileo. The rest of Wednesday consisted of getting used to the whole feel of being there – for most of us it was the first time at World Championships, figuring out what there was to do at the center, where everything was, meeting up with the POD and setting up the pit, and playing in one practice match.
On Thursday and Friday, the actual qualification matches happened. We did much better than we expected; we had a record of 5-5-0, so we won 5 matches and lost 5 matches. There were highs and lows, where we would score a lot in the cargo and hang nicely at the end, but there were times where the shooter was not working to the best of its ability. Any problems were fixed though by our pit crew. After each day we held a team meeting at the “Monument Au Fantome” sculpture by Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) at Discovery Green in front of the convention center.
Even though the robot did pretty well and our rank was not too bad, we did not get picked for an alliance to go to the quarterfinals. Honestly, although we did not advance, we still were super proud of ourselves for what we did accomplish. Awards wise, our Chairman’s presenters presented to the judges on Thursday, and they did phenomenal. Sadly, we did not become a Chairman’s finalist, but we are still hard at work and ready to improve on what we can.
Throughout the 4 days, there were many miscellaneous events, such as our meeting with FRC team 8020 CyberPunk from Taiwan, the girls’ teams get-together with FRC 1868, the Space Cookies, our FIRST Ladies meet-up, and the NCWIT gathering, along with attending the various conferences, walking around the Innovation Faire, looking around Scholarship Row, and going on pit tours with our mentors. Also on Saturday, some of us went on “field trips” to the Johnson Space Center, Rice University, and The Menil Collection.
Overall, 2022 worlds was definitely a success! This was such an out of the box and outstanding experience that our team will look fondly back on. Now, for many of us, it’s time for AP exams.