Zane State Competition Debrief

Whew-ee, that was a rough competition. Unfortunately for us, there were only 4 slots left open when we registered, so we had a big decision to make; which team to divide or leave behind. We all agreed that it would be unfair to leave people behind, so we made the decision to have each team take one or two of the remaining team, which would turn out to be team 7316D.

​ Early in the morning, we trudged onto the bus and quickly proceeded to pass out as we drove the two or so hours to Zanesville. I'd be lying if I said the trip there was encouraging, it wasn't awful, it was just a sleepy bus of pure exhaustion, and in my experience, sleeping on the way to a competition leaves you groggy, short tempered and a wee bit crabby when you wake up-not exactly the best combination for working as a team. Unfortunately, travel is NOT something we can control, so we can merely do our best to work through our moods when we wake up.

When we got there, we set up in our classroom, and my experience of bus sleep held quite true; irritable engineering kids. So we tried as best we could to work well, but we were also very unprepared. The past week leading up to this was Midterms, for both us and the students in our club that are taking college courses in post-secondary. If that's not enough to make people crabby, I don't know what is. Inspection went fine, and the driver's meeting went well, but it was immediately after that that things started to go sideways.

Team B's first few matches were decent, but they pulled a wire during a match, and that became a recurring issue. Team C had some internal issues, causing their driver to be defaulted to another member of their team who had very little experience on this particular robot. Team E's robot refused to move. All four teams were sharing the same two sets of VEXnet Keys, and let me tell you, THAT took some juggling. The moment one team's match ended, they would pull their keys, even before the match was done being calculated, to pass them off to the next team.

The only team that seemed to be in good health was Team A, who made Alliance Selections and eventually reached quarter-finals. As they continued to compete, a good grouping of some member from all the other teams enjoyed a meeting of the minds. This competition had stressed everyone out so much, that our group dynamics that are usually our proudest aspect, were in very sorry shape. An optional group de-stress session was in order, students found an empty study room tucked away near the cafeteria, and mandatory quiet time was enacted. It didn't last long as we began to slowly sift through our laundry list of issues.

After a decent amount of soul-searching and laughter, reminding us why we all were there in the first place; we loved it. So pretty soon Mr. Spak tracked us down and asked us what conclusions we came to during our exile.

Team C's Chris Wertenberger will be reassigned to Team E due to the lack of experience on said team and the drastic miscommunication between he and Jasper. Team D will return to the floor at the next competition. Team B will strengthen their resolve and build upon their foundations to shoot higher at the next tournament.

Having come to these resolutions, the teams returned to the arena to watch awards and got there just in time for Team 7316C to win the Design Award! Silver lining moment of the day.

To the left are some images of the log that won the Design Award.

​Now to get some sleep...

~Erica Kraus      Club Secretary