VOI at the Valley Christian Qualifier
The team arrived at Valley Christian High School at about 8 AM, signed in, and entered the pits. Unfortunately, the sign with our team number had the wrong name. We aren't Infinity! Jamie quickly crossed out the mistake and corrected it: "Voltage of Imagination, Team 7591".
After setting up the pit with our robot, spare parts, and posterboards, we headed to presentation. The process was smooth; we were confident that we answered the judges' questions appropriately. In good spirits, we attended the opening ceremony, eagerly awaiting the start of qualification matches.
Our first match was with Youngju's brother's team, Team 5353 Pink Fruffy Unicorns, against 5211, Judge Oven, and 7303, Bionic Hybrids. We made a mistake this round: our autonmous was fine, but after testing our ramp-only autonomous program, we forgot to set our program back to Tele-Op. However, we still ended up winning the match, thanks to PFU's great robot and our successful autonmous programs.
The following four matches went well. We ended winning all five matches and ranking first! Go team!
Team 5151 Infinity accepted our invitation to ally our teams. The final alliances were:
Alliance 1: 7591 Voltage of Imagination/5151 Infinity
Alliance 2: 3791 Zipties/7316 Iron Panthers
Alliance 3: 7303 Robo Avatars/5353 Pink Fruffy Unicorns
Alliance 4: 7854 Tesseract/
We won our first two matches against Alliance 4 while Alliance 3 beat Alliance 2. Therefore, all four finalist teams were from Mission High School. The final matches were more stressful for us: our partner's autonomous program went haywire and their robot lost connection during the match. We were destroyed by about 50 points, but steeled ourselves for the next match -
- which we won. Barely. At one point, our robot got stuck on top of a block, rendering us helpless and incapable of moving. If the referees had not taken our robot off the block, we would have been defeated.
The final match was tense as well: scoring was extremely close throughout, and we were unsure of the outcome. But we won. By 11 points. Two-time winning alliance captain! We were elated. Ecstatic. Relieved.
We were nominated for several awards, including the control award. We ended up winning the Rockwell Collin Innovate Award, and of course, the award for winning alliance. The last award was alliance: we placed 2nd, which demonstrated that we were getting closer - it was almost in our reach.
Later, we decided on Korean food for dinner, and went to Claire's house for Secret Santa and video games. We laughed and had fun, and everyone left by about 11 PM.
And that is how 12/14 went.