On October 27th, several Girls of Steel members and mentors traveled to Rochester, New York to compete at the Rah Cha Cha Ruckus, which is an off-season FIRST Power Up Competition, loosely based on a Halloween theme. Ruckus is sponsored by several Rochester and Western New York-area FIRST teams! We brought our 2018 competition robot, Clyde.

Out of the 37 qualifier matches Girls of Steel competed in 5 of them. The team won 2 matches. The best round was number 3 when the autonomous worked perfectly and Clyde scored several points on the scale! Girls of Steel made it to elimination matches and was selected to join the 8th alliance by team 1585 (captains), 340, and 1559. In the first match, 3504’s bot played against the 1st alliance. While the first match was lost, the 8th alliance was in the lead for more than half of the game. Unfortunately, due to a robotic malfunction, the 8th alliance fell behind in the points resulting in 3504 losing the second elimination match.

With most of last year’s drive team graduated, 3504 competed with a brand new drive team. For their first event, they did absolutely wonderful! Everyone who attended put out their best effort and did an awesome job.

“Ruckus was a great experience for our team who is going through a drive team transition this year. We were able to get some practical drive time, as well as scout and work in the pit like we would do at any other competition. It was also fun because we got to see teams that we usually do not see at our regionals!” – Langley

Ruckus has its own set of spooky awards and Girls of Steel won “Alien Invaders” for being the farthest traveling team. Overall it was a great event.