Auburn Mountainview 2019 Recap

Auburn Mountainview was our first competition of 2019 with our new robot. Unfortunately, we started behind the eight ball with only 80% functionality due to losing four days of critical time during the snowstorm. We could pick up the cargo ball and place it, but not place hatch covers and no climb. 

However, we got lucky in the first two matches with good partners, and each time our alliance won. So, we started in 4th place. With a little up and down, we were still in 7th at the end of the morning. Our drive team was doing very well but had to compensate for problems like a ball stuck in the middle of the intake lift (they twirled around and banged a wall to get it out). The afternoon was filled with highs and lows where the robot was down part of the time and had communication issues. We also made a few rookie errors in robot maintenance without a good checklist. So, we ended the day in 15th place with a 4-5 record.

The next day we roared back and won the last three qualification matches and surprised the competition by consistently doing our nearly functional climb to level 2 on the habitat at the end of each match. This kicked us up to 7th place (out of 38) at the end of qualification rounds, where we became an alliance captain for the elimination rounds. This created a chance to pick up district ranking points toward the PNW District Championships. We were dogged by bad luck in the quarterfinals, with our partner robot getting stuck on a ball and rendered immobile in the first match and our robot dropping out for 30 seconds in the second match. These unfortunate events resulted in us getting knocked out in the quarterfinals, but we felt proud to have been an alliance captain for the quarterfinals. If we do the same or better in our next event with a 100% functional robot, we will play a significant role in the District Championships!

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Bag & Tag 2019