The Girls of Steel traveled to California University of Pennsylvania March 16-18, 2017 for our first regional, The Greater Pittsburgh Regional, with the fabulous MO! We did phenomenally, with awards won and matches dominated, so all in all it was a great weekend for everyone on the team.
Thursday, the first day of competition, held some downtime and practice matches for our drive team and robot to warm up. Lots of teams didn’t even show up to the practice matches, so there wasn’t a point in scouting truly (but we did!). Our awards team practiced for their Chairman’s Presentation on Saturday morning and the whole team relaxed into the regional and set our sights on what we wanted to accomplish, which includes maybe winning a regional!
Friday was the second day and held much more excitement. Between pit scouting, talking to other teams, and cheering our heads off, there was barely time to take in the great atmosphere! Amazingly, our drive team and robot were working their bots off and the team was ranked #1 for most of the day! Yet, you win some you lose some, so at the end of the day we were seated at #13, still pretty great! In the stands, there was so much excitement and joy from the screaming girls that it was impossible to curb your enthusiasm. Our robot worked perfectly, climbing the rope almost every time, placing gears precisely, and even scoring in the top of the boiler! To wrap the day off, one of our mentors, Dr. George Kantor, won the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award! Great thanks to him for his great mentoring and the awards team for writing a great essay.
Saturday, the final day, was absolutely a whirlwind of happiness! Finishing out the Qualification Matches that rank your team, we ended in 9th place! At alliance selections, two teams within the top 8 were chosen and we became alliance leaders of alliance #7. With Rozie on the stage, we chose two teams, 3955 and 144, to take us to victory!
Our first qualification match was a bust; we received a yellow card because someone reached into the field from the airship, but then the match was cancelled altogether because of a field fault issue. We won the next match, came closely behind the other team in the second, and we were about to win the last match and advance to the semi-finals, but we received another yellow card for the same reason, effectively disqualifying us. The girls were truly saddened by the news but kept up the good attitudes for our friends on other teams! The day ended with the awards ceremony which yielded more success as our team received the Engineering Inspiration Award! We are officially going to St.Louis for the FIRST World Champs! The weekend was so exciting and after the competition was finished, we helped disassemble the field which was the cherry on a fantastic sundae competition.
