How to have a great weekend on 4 hours of sleep

So, once again proving that he is the only one with a life in our household, Chris had quite the weekend.

He started out Friday night with prom. His date's name is Kylie and they have been dating for a couple months now. They went to a friend's house for a dinner of fondue with several other couples. They then went to prom followed by after-prom at Art Sports, which is basically a huge room of trampolines. He made it home about 3 in the morning and went to bed for about 4 hours.



At 8, he was up and on his way to the last robotics event of the season. They received a grant from the Air Force Academy to put together an underwater robotics program that can be taught to middle school kids. They worked with a couple other local teams to assemble and test out the robots in the school swimming pool. That ended about 5:30. It also earned him this picture in the newspaper the next day.



At 6:30, we attended his band banquet, where he received an outstanding band student award.

Not a bad weekend for him, though he came home and slept for about 15 hours straight.

Track and Field Day

You know the school year is winding down when track and field rolls around. I had to work most of the day, but managed to go out and watch a few of the events.

As you can see, he was running hard.

Final Robotics Competition - Nationals in St. Louis

Chris's final robotics competition has come and gone. The kids competed at the national competition in St. Louis this past weekend and had a great time. They hoped to be competitive, but were expecting to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack. Instead, after 10 qualifying matches, they found themselves ranked 7th out of 88 teams in their division, having a record of 8-2. The top 8 teams are guaranteed a spot in the finals. After picking the 2 teams they wanted on their alliance, they went on to elimination matches, where unfortunately they quickly lost their first 2 matches to the 2nd place seed. However, this was their highest finish ever and they did it at the national competition. It was a real achievement for a 3rd-year team. They were right in there with teams who have been doing this for a lot longer.

The event was held in the Edward Jones dome, where the St. Louis Rams play, and the event center next door. There were a total of 352 teams competing.


Their robot helped place a lot of tubes in this match

for a great score.


Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas became involved with FIRST this year and, Friday night, treated the kids to a free Black Eyed Peas concert. Since Chris's team was a Chairman's award winner, they had seats on the floor right in front of the stage. Chris is just sorry he didn't get to see Morgan Freeman, who was also wandering around the event.


What a great way to end 3 years of a lot of hard work. This has absolutely been the most impressive program I have ever seen in a school. There are LEGO robotics teams in a lot of middle schools now, as well as FTC (smaller robots) and the FRC (big robots) teams. If your kids are science minded at all and have a chance to join one of these teams, they won't regret it. It is a great opportunity to get some hands-on experience in not only building and designing a robot, but also in running an organization. They do a lot of work with business professionals from the community, both as mentors and going out to present their team to potential sponsors. It also really encourages the kids to get involved with their communities any way they can, be it helping new teams or doing charity work. It really is a great program.

Pinewood Derby

After a 5-year hiatus from pinewood derby for us, it was time to build a car for Nate. John came over with his boys last week and they cut and sanded and weighted the cars. We had our derby tonight and Nate took third! Not a bad first showing for him.


First place got a baseball trophy, 2nd got a basketball trophy, and Nate got a bowling trophy
.

But we fixed it for him when we got home.

More Robotics - Denver Regional

This weekend was the Denver Regional for Chris's robotics team. Qualifying matches ran all day Friday and Saturday morning. They did really well, finishing with a record of 8 wins and 2 losses, earning 10th place out of 45 teams, their highest finish in the 3 years they have been competing. The top 8 teams pick 2 teams to compete with in elimination matches. The other Colorado Springs team placed 2nd and made Chris's team their first pick. Unfortunately, they lost their first round in the elimination matches. As in Kansas City, it came down to the minibot. In KC, their pole was turned off due to a penalty, so the minibot didn't count. In Denver, the bot deployed, but something went wrong and it didn't climb the pole. It would have been worth 10 points and they lost the match by 4 points. The kids were really disappointed as they had really high expectations after the Kansas regional.

Some bright spots, though. Their team took home all 3 of the top awards given.

Woodie Flowers award: This is the top award for team mentors. Each team is allowed to nominate one of their mentors. Friday night, Mr. McLean, who is their engineering teacher and head mentor, won that award.

The FIRST Dean's List: Each team is allowed to nominate 2 outstanding students for this award. It is for a student who is highly involved not only in his team, but is also active with bringing science and engineering ideas out into the community. One of their members won this award Saturday night.

The Chairman’s Award: This is the most prestigious award they can win. The award honors the team that best represents a model for other FRC teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST. Teams that win this are involved in helping other teams and involved in the community. Chris's team has really been out this last year, helping start up and mentor LEGO robotics leagues in the junior highs, working with Care and Share, running summer camps for robotics for kids, etc. You can see the video they submitted for this award here.

The Chairman's award is the last award given after everything else is done. Though they had earned the 2 big personal awards at the end of Saturday night, the team itself had earned no awards. That, along with an early elimination in the finals, had the kids a bit down. However, the last award of the night went to them. As it happens, teams that win the Chairman's award are also invited to compete at nationals, so

THEY'RE GOING TO ST. LOUIS!!

(Go 2 over from the left on the bottom and straight up and you'll find Chris in the very back)

Well, at least we hope so. There is still the not so minor point of scraping together enough money to go in the next 2 weeks, but it is fantastic to make it.

Chris is finishing out his senior year well with this team. The team started his sophomore year and in the last 3 years, adding in the 1st place finish in Denver their rookie year and the Rookie All Star award they also took that year (top award for a rookie team), they have won every one of the major awards plus a few of the minor ones and made nationals twice. That is a huge accomplishment for such a new team.

Way to go guys!

Happy Birthday Nate

Nate turned 9 on March 30.

It's Robotics Time Again

Chris's team getting ready to score a tube

Yes, it is once again robotics season and Chris's team is off to a great start. They got their game way back in January. This year it was to build a robot that could pick up inner tubes of different colors and shapes and hang them on a wall. They would get 3 points for the top level, 2 for the middle, and 1 for the bottom. If they could program the robot to hang a tube by itself during the first 30 seconds of the game, they would get 6 points and their points on that level would double. If they could put the inner tubes in a certain order on the wall, that was also worth points. In the last 10 seconds, they could release a mini robot to climb a pole. First one to the top gets 30 points, second 20, etc.

The kids worked until the last week of February, when the robot had to be sealed up, and then hauled it to Kansas City this weekend to compete in the Kansas City Regional. They got off to a pretty good start. They had a couple problems, but were always one of the teams consistently scoring. Despite having problems with their minibot falling off the robot the first couple games, they had it running up the pole by the last match.

The way the competitions work is that they play 9 qualifying matches randomly sorted into alliances of 3 teams. At the end of those matches, the top 8 teams pick 2 teams that they want to compete with in the quarterfinals. Chris's team didn't finish high enough to be one of the top 8 teams, but they were picked by the 2nd seeded team. Their alliance dominated their quarterfinal matches, winning 2 games to 0. They then made a real fight of it in the semifinals winning 1 match and losing 2 other real close ones. In fact, they were leading in the last match by over 40 points, but one of their teams sent their minibot up the pole too early and it didn't count. If it had, they would have made the finals. Very exciting!

They also brought home 2 awards, the entrepreneurship award for how they run their team and a runner-up award for safety.

They will now come back home with everything they learned in KC and get ready for the Denver regional on April 8.

Deploying the minibot