This blog post is about the qualification matches on Friday and Saturday. Our Friday started very early. In the opening ceremony we had to sing the national anthem of The Netherlands. After that we started the qualification matches. In the morning we had some problems with the gears to our wheels. There was too much friction between the gears, which resulted in voltage drops. During the matches this was noticeable because there were moments in which we lost connection to our robot.
That afternoon, we fixed the problem and had a solid connection again. We also had some difficulties with the software. Despite the issues, we played some good matches so we were confident we would fix the pending issues.
The next day we sung our national anthem again. We saw that we were getting better in the game. We won two and we lost two. Unfortunately, we weren’t chosen for the play-offs.
Aside from the game itself we also had our pit, where we did great. On Friday, we had Don Bossi, the president of FIRST, in our pit. We had a lot of fun with the rest of the teams. A few teams swapped team shirts with us, something we were happy with. We made some good friends at the Orlando regional.
The award ceremony followed the finals. We weren’t expecting an award but we were ecstatic when the announcer said the following:
“This team exudes gracious professionalism, showing heart and spirit for the competition and al participants. This team finds no challenge impossible, and brings the principles of FIRST to their city and far beyond.”
We won the Gracious Professionalism award!
The definition of this award as quoted from FIRST: “The Gracious Professionalism Award recognizes outstanding sportsmanship and continuous gracious professionalism in the heat of competition, both on and off the field of play. To win, a team must exemplify the principles of FIRST – fairness, humility, sharing and persevering – and a winning attitude.”
We are honoured to receive this award. We are overjoyed we get to take a FIRST award home. And we feel equally honoured for receiving the following awards from other teams:
The Golden Throttle from team 4901 Garnet Squadron Robotics for being the only team at the regional to use throttle motors.
The Most Classy Chassis from team 4451 Robot Garage for having the most classy robot.
The Thanks for being awesome award from team 3556 Get Smart a self-explanatory award.
We made a lot of friends and had a great time at the Orlando regional. We would like to thank all the teams for this amazing experience.
Signing off.
Mark, Ronald & Kerwin,
Impossibe Robotics