Holding Pattern

After showcasing at the District 206 Student Showcase last Thursday, the team’s goals have really changed to focus much more on our upcoming Regional Competition at Williams Arena on March 29-31. We have been working on a bunch of different preparation projects including the flag, the banner, hotels, van drivers, and raising up the robot cart. The other big excitement was that some of the team members were on the radio this morning!

Bydlon, Bryce, Ryan, and Jenna were on the Open Line segment on KXRA, the local talk radio station, this morning. The hour long segment was set up by Nicole Fernholz from Alexandria Area Economic Development Commission. The AAEDC is part of the PMMC which is one of our main sponsors. Once a month, the AAEDC gives a suggestion for the Open Line segment to showcase area manufacturing business and allowed our team to be on the segment this month. We are always looking for ways to continue to raise the awareness of our team and how great FIRST Robotics is. After a little nerves at the beginning, the hour went by really fast and was a blast!  

Rachel has been working really hard on our team’s flag. I am avoiding posting pictures because it is so freaking awesome that I want it to be a complete unveiling instead of a piece by piece reveal. Her hard work will live on with the team for a long time (the flag isn’t going anywhere any time soon). We also received our banner from Affordable Signs in Alexandria. They did a fantastic job! It will look so awesome in the back of our pit. 

We reserved our hotel rooms today after a little bit of a room scare. Some forcefulness and adaptiveness from Bydlon and the team allowed us to stay at the same place: Best Western Plus in Bloomington, MN. It’s a great location across the street from the Mall of America. Plus, the rooms are fantastic and basically brand new. It would have been really depressing to not stay there again. We are still working on transportation to the Regional. This is an ongoing project.  

Bryce, Molly, Brandon, Jordan, and Ryan have worked in shifts on raising the wheels of the robot cart. We only raised it about 3 or 4 inches but even that small amount will really help working on it. Plus, Bryce and Jordan started working on some shelves for the bottom of the cart. This will allow us to bring some extra batteries and tools with us to the queue line. And it’ll look sweet too.  

The mascot team (Kacy and Steph) have continued work on making the mascot the best it can be. They fixed some of the lettering and finished some painting touch ups.

No planned excitement for the rest of this week or next until March 28 when we depart for Minneapolis. The team is kind of in a holding pattern for now. We are just waiting on the edge of our seats for next week to come so we can finally see all our hard work out on the court!