2011 Seattle Cascade Regional

Thursday:
Our first day of Regionals! Skunkworks spent the day adding changes we made to the practice robot after bagging the competition bot. While they were doing that, the other members were weighing the different robots against each other on the field and scouting the pits. After hours of work, we finally got our robot inspected. We still had a few more things to fix and unfortunately were never able to run the robot or practice. Finally at about 8:45 p.m. we had things fixed and headed for home.

Checking out the venue on Thursday

Our scouting skunks settled in the stands

 

Friday:
Even though our first couple of matches were difficult, we continued to improve with each one. The robot was consistent, and our scoring and pushing power had never been greater. The mini-bot was also pretty consistent, with a time of about 1.5 seconds or less. Our whole school showed up and were able to cheer us on for a few matches. It was fun to see the other students, as well as a lot of elementary kids, and they were really interested in what we were doing. The skunks in the pit went around to other teams to help them fix their robots and offer help before their competitions. We were scouting well all day, and several teams have come and asked us about our robot, and have wanted us to pick them. Our coach won the Outstanding Volunteer Award and the Woodie Flowers Award, and our team also won the Engineering Excellence Award. As of the end of Friday, we stood at #6 in seeding points, with two more qualification matches to go. A great day for all!

Our Chairman's team gave a great presentation and received high marks.
Watch our Chairman's video:

Our MC, Blair, got a gift of a Sounders soccer jersey

Skunk.I.Am getting ready to play

Saturday:
An incredible day filled with fun and excitement. Saturday morning, our robot ran consistently and we ended up as the 7th seeded alliance! Our robot scored impressively and we soon were the one to watch. When it came to alliance picking, we selected rookie team 3681, the Raiderbots from Nathan Hale High School, and team 3219, TREAD from Auburn High School. We made it into the semi-finals and after three very intense and exciting matches, were beat by the Regional Winners, team 2471, Mean Machine, 1510, The Wildcats, and 2660, the Pengbots.

During the awards ceremony, our team was thrilled to win the Engineering Inspiration Award which qualifies us for National Championships in St. Louis! One of our students, Lydia Johnston, was honored as a Dean's List finalist which celebrates outstanding student leaders who have a passion for FIRST!

While awards are nice, we were VERY proud to see the rookie teams we assisted thrive both on and off the field. Teams 3574, of Highline High School, and 3588 of Lindburgh High School, attended our rookie workshops and later went on to receive the Rookie All-Star Award at the Cascade and Olympic Regionals, and team 3574 was even recognized for their incredible safety.

Congrats to team 360 for winning the Cascade Regional Chairman's Award and also to team 1899, Saints Robotics, for not only being the Olympic Regional Winners but also winning the Olympic Regional Chairman's Award.

We offer our congratulations to all of the teams that participated in the joint Seattle Regional. We would like to offer our thanks to mentors, parents, volunteers and all of the spectators for supporting FIRST!

Awards:

- Seattle Regional Engineering Inspiration - This award qualifies us to go to St. Louis and we get a check for $3,000 from NASA to help.

- Seattle Regional Excellence in Engineering - Another outstanding design from our team. The 3 effector prototypes and 8 or 9 Mini-Bot prototypes, built off a proven base and lift, were simply the hit of the field. The hard work put in at every step of the design/build process really showed - I had to dodge three mentors from the other field running to see our robot play - it was that "sabobba" (cool).

- Coach - FIRSTWA Volunteer of the Year - Coach was nominated by his FIRST Washington peers, this is an incredible honor for Coach. They introduced Coach as the "Skunkfather", noted the incredible team he has built and his visionary contribution of FIRST for Washington.

- Coach - Seattle Cascade Regional Woody Flowers Finalist - This was awarded to Coach by the national judges in NH and is selected from possibly hundreds of applications submitted by kids. It qualifies Coach for the national Woody Flowers award, the highest honor for volunteers in FIRST. Just being selected is an incredible honor.

- Lydia Johnston - Seattle Cascade Regional Dean's List Finalist - This is also awarded by the national judges in NH and is selected from hundreds of applications made by mentors. This qualifies Lydia for the national Dean's List award. Every student, parent and faculty member can see how deserving this is.

--Gary Miller

 

Thanks to Lisa Weeks for sharing photos