Team Duct Tape Celebrates Fun and Friendship after the Championship

Congratulations to Inspire Award winner, Exploding Bacon and captain of the Winning Alliance, Team Hydra!  We’re sorry we’re not going to Atlanta with you, but we’ll be cheering you all the way and keeping our fingers crossed for you in April!

We came that close, among the top three contenders for the Inspire Award, and fighting to the end for Final Alliance team captain Ro Ro Ro Ur Bot. Not a bad finish for rookie team!

The Florida FTC State Championship was fantastic – running smoothly and efficiently with our modified system of teams using their own computers loaded with the Field Management System programs.  Most times, matches were running ahead of schedule, and the event, complete with award and volunteer recognitions — including a great big, deeply felt surprise THANK YOU! to our incredibly dedicated FTC Affiliate Partner Michael Coleman that netted him a well-deserved standing ovation — ended five minutes early!

Team sponsored “Side Show” games added to the fun between matches and during breaks, and the catered BBQ lunch was the icing on the Championship cake.

Friends and Family Cheering Us On

The state event was a whole new robot game, featuring the cream of the crop from previous qualifying competitions, with vigorous matches and  hard-won points.  We gave it our best shot, pulled out all the stops and competed to the very end, in a Final Alliance match that went three full rounds that brought the crowd to its feet.

Watching the matches

But in the end, the Winning Alliance Award went  to the Red team, captained by Hillsborough High School’s Team Hydra #2425, who was joined by Lightening, #348, and Rogue Robotics of Brevard 4-H, #2800.

Our Blue team alliance was captained by Ro Ro Ro Ur Bot, #617, strong competitors with whom we enjoyed an alliance at the Lakeland USF Polytechnic event, and where we were joined by team #3123, Spontaneous Combustion.  The final round was won by just 8 points.

And it was all exciting, and fun and we can’t wait to do it again next season.  It would have been great to win, but we’re proud of our effort and remarkable success. In just six months, we went from a rookie team of six students, several of whom had never met before, and two of whom had never participated in a robotics program before,  to one of the top ranked teams in the state. We won an Inspire Award and captained the Winning Alliance at our very first competition, just three months after coming together, and won a Think Award and captained a second Winning Alliance Team  at our second competition, just two months later.

Hard at Work

Practicing for the Interview

During the Championship, we overcame almost every technical difficulty possible, including a broken servo during competition, battery cables that came unattached in the middle of a match, a second round of balky servos (that miraculously came back to life for one more match!) and a complete and utter shut down that we thought would put us out of the rest of the Championship. But thanks to the wonderful Gracious Professionalism of Exploding Bacon, who walked us through a reboot of our whole system, bringing us back to life, and equally generous and kind GP by other teams, we kept dragging ourselves up from the mat and even managed a high score of 138 — in the match where our battery cable came out and stopped us dead after one minute.

Team Duct Tape also experienced some glorious moments, like hearing friends and family cheer them on from the stands, waving signs and shouting “No Duct Tape, No Glory!” ; and giving their best interview ever, a smooth, informative and comfortable session that pleased them and the judges.  Their Engineering notebook is a thing of beauty.  And the duct tape look — the hats speak for themselves!

Celebrating our Marvelous Mentors!

We had a blast, learned an enormous amount, and made some terrific friends we hope we’ll know for many years to come.  Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive and helpful of Team Duct Tape, and stay tuned…

We’ll be going strong over the summer with lots of great activities, more edifying outings, and sharing resources and experiences.

So stock up on the duct tape, we’re still on a roll!!

Duct Tape is Here to Stay!