Practice Competition Day

From a millions questions sprouting from nerves to a determined team wanting to complete more missions, coming back from practice competition day and working for another two hours. This was the team’s first FIRST LEGO League practice event

I want to thank our Sponsors Able Baker, Freeman’s Fish Market, American Jiu Jitsu, Green Roots Organic and Hopscotch. We can’t thank you enough for helping make our rookie year a self-funded year. I know parents like that (including me!)

The day started with the team getting situated and looking at all the ‘great, so much better’ projects and the ‘whoa, look at that robot’ build. In the end, they realized everyone was in the same position and the ‘better looking’ robots and teams had the same challenges as they did.

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Coach Jake and I sat in the coaches meeting, and learned once again us adults like to be perfect and can get a wee bit too competitive. Oh, and our girls new more than they thought.

First up was our Innovation Project practice, where the girls shared their vision of improved pedestrian safety in our two towns, with two FIRST judges. We’ll see what feedback they decide to incorporate into next weeks Qualifier.

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Then came their three practice events. These were 15 minute time slots, where they could work on their code and robot, and run a simulated 2 1/2 minute robot competition. They scored 130 and 115 points in the two timed runs they decided to do. Not bad, considering morning veteran teams topped out at around 300 points.

The Clifton HS Robotics teams ran the event and did a fabulous job. They helped showcase Core Values through a LEGO brick build for each team to represent what they were about.

Two and a half months ago, they thought they knew nothing. Today they learned the High School level FIRST Robotics Challenge teams are a certified Varsity sport in the state of New Jersey.

See you next week, North Plainfield HS.