FRC Team 1432 was pleased to be able to host FRC Team 4125 from Umatilla for their very first FIRST Robotics Competition Kick Off January 6 – 8, 2012 at the Knights of Pythias Ivanhoe Lodge number 1.
FRC Teams 1432 and 4125 sharing dinner Friday night before Kick Off
Umatilla had a 5 hour drive down so by spending the night with us they were able to arrive at Kick off fresh and rested. We did our best to make them feel welcome.
Friday night we all enjoyed a Chinese dinner from Wong’s Garden on Woodstock and after eating we shared some ideas on how to plan for the coming season.
Team 1432 helping team 4125 with their early planning
A good time was had by all though many were feeling the lack of sleep the next day.
There is a lot of planning and prioritizing before a team can build a robot and a lot of jobs to be identified and filled if a team is going to be successful. Luckily for FRC Team 4125 they have 23 students to divide the jobs between. They did an excellent job preparing for the Kick Off.
Arriving at Kick Off with the team from Umatilla (FRC Team 4125), pure bedlam.
The Kick Off, if you have never been before is wall to wall teenagers all suffering from a lack of sleep and all extremely anxious to find out what this year’s competition is going to be all about. The doors open at 6:00AM and people have been milling around outside in the cold and dark waiting for the doors to open for at least half an hour.
Even with people sitting on the stairs and standing on every level surface they had to ope two class rooms for over flow.
Once inside it was a scramble to find a place to sit. It was a large auditorium but even so it was standing room only and several teams got put into over flow class rooms with a TV feed which did not include any of the live activity on stage. Sorry Umatilla, next year we will leave at 5AM instead of get up at 5 AM.
It was a great Kick Off and the game looks really challenging.
Basket ball by robot and with obstacles in the middle of the field. The Coopertition element is intriguing too.
