The Last South Super-Regionals
Super-Regionals was… interesting. Our whole team was super excited to compete. It was the first time in a while that we’ve traveled (worlds last year was in St. Louis), and it would be during the last year of Super-Regionals ever. We wanted to kill it.
So, we redesigned almost everything on our robot: the intake, the outtake, the lifter, and all the wiring including where the electronics were mounted. The only thing that stayed the same is our jewel hitter, and even that moved over a few inches to the side to make room for other new hardware. We’d need it if we wanted to break through the ~10 glyph ceiling we were hitting with our current intake. At the end, our robot was transformed:
And we did all this in two weeks.
Maybe we thought it was a good idea because of how much better our robot was in the two-week rush after finding out we were going to worlds on the lottery last year, but it’s most definitely not. Although the design ideas for this were strong, I can tell you first hand not being able to test makes everything feel like a shot in the dark (especially my pride and joy, autonomous!). Towards the end of Super-Regionals, we started to get a better grasp on our robot and preform more like how we did at State. Definitely would have been better to take things slow.
The competition was fierce, and at the end of the day: we were ranked 30th. We didn’t do so hot, even though we were on the cusp of something great. Our new design had a shot at the innovate award for the custom 3D printed wheels on our intake to help grab glyphs, but we didn’t end up winning that either.
But: We are one of the 10 or so teams selected from the Super Regionals waitlist lottery! We’re advancing to the World Championships in Houston!
It’s different from the lottery last year– the odds were so much better because of how great our season is going. In the six weeks before worlds, we will have the time to perfect our design and add things like a Relic grabber. Most importantly, we will have time to test everything and come out swinging!