2023 Charged Up: Miami Valley Regional

 

The Girls of Steel did amazing at the 2023 FIRST Miami Valley Regional in Cincinnati, Ohio. The regional spanned 3 days: Thursday, March 16th; Friday, March 17th; and Saturday, March 18th. The first day consisted of practice matches. We started off well by testing out the robot in a match setting, but then we had a significant hiccup – – our entire arm fell off the robot! It was shocking, but our amazing pit crew came to the rescue to fix it. We only had to miss one practice match that day with a big part of our robot falling apart.

The second day, Friday, the team started off with a win which is amazing! However during our second match, our entire turret fell off. Instead of panicking, we started brainstorming what we could do to fix it. In the mean time, we had another match and we became a defense bot. Drive team did such an awesome job by adjusting, and we killed it as a defense bot. By next match, we fixed our robot by simply getting rid of the turret and just permanently bolting down the arm to the rest of the robot. Even though we did not have the 360 degree advantage, drive team once again killed it at driving the robot and adapting to the changes. Our record at the end of the day was 6-4-0, and we were rank 20. On Friday, we also had our Impact Award team present in front of the judges. They also did an excellent job!

The last day, Saturday, was a true whirlwind. We won all of the qualification matches that day leading up to alliance selection, landing in rank 16. During alliance selection, we were all on the edges of our seats that we would get picked for an alliance, and we did! We were the second pick for the number 2 alliance; the alliance captain was team 4020 CyberTribe, and the first pick was team 4028 Beak Squad. Our alliance absolutely crushed it, making it to the finals against the first alliance. It was an intense best of 3, and at the end we lost, thus becoming regional finalists. We had outstanding teamwork, determination, and spirit during MVR. Looking forward to our next regional!