We arrived at Kettering very excited. There is always an extra level of excitement for a week 1 event since nobody knows how the game is actually going to be played. Our pit continued with the medieval theme. This year there were some enhancements with the addition of lights and coverings on the top among other things.
One of the charms of Kettering is that you can sit very close to the field. Last year was the first year we played at Kettering and we had a great time.
Unfortunately, our robot did not work properly throughout Friday and Saturday during qualifying round. Between the last minute rush to finish the robot and having used up most of the 6 hours of access time, there was not enough time spent on testing. The problem was finally traced to a software programming error. Unfortunately it was found after our last qualifying round match, so none of the teams saw what we could really accomplish with our robot. Consequently we were not picked to play in the elimination round.
However we did pick up two awards, the Best Website award and the Engineering Inspiration award so we did not leave empty handed. We won the same awards a year ago at Kettering also. The team was kind of disappointed because not making it to elimination would make it very hard to get enough points to qualify for State Championship.