New York City Regional 2016
In 2016, we went more to the north of America and for the first time we have 2 regionals planned. For our first regional we went to the New York City Regional. Our journey to the big apple and our exploring can be found below. We had to work hard during the practice day. The robot wasn't complete when we had to ship it. So, as soon the pit area was open we started to work on completing the robot and to get the robot through the inspection. During on match our robot "De Ruyter" tips over, luckily our pit crew were able the fix the damages. In the end we finished with a rank of 46 out of 66 teams. We even were awarded with the Creativity Award sponsored by Xerox. After the regional was over, we went exploring New York City. Even with the rain we kept going and saw some beautiful landmarks. After a couple of days resting and exploring it was time to travel to our second regional. The New York Tech Valley Regional.
Day 1 – travel day to New York City
At Thursday 10 March 4:00 am, we gathered the team at KMWE / DutchAero in Eindhoven. With everything packed at the last moment, we went to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. 8,5 hours of long flight hours later we finally arrived in New York City. After a short bus trip to our hotel and a quick rest at our rooms, we made a walk around our hotel and the dome for the New York City Regional. When our 5 team members made the pit ready for our first day at the regional, the rest of the team split up into groups and had their own walk around NYC. We will keep you updated about our BIG adventure in the BIG Apple ! #NewYorkCityRegional
Day 2 @ NYC - Practice Matches
For the second day of our journey, which was the first day of the New York City FIRST Regional at the Javits Center, we had a lot of tasks to fulfill with the whole team. We had the inspection for the robot and the practice matches coming up. The robot was a big task itself, because we had to assemble and test a lot of parts on the robot. For the practice matches we had our pit and stand scouts prepared to notice if there were some interesting teams and tactics which will be useful for us. With tomorrow coming up, we have still some tasks to complete, the robot needs to be fine-tuned for full use at a game, so don’t stress if something doesn’t go well 100%, it’s a work in progress. Our scouts will be ready for some fast and efficient scouting for possible alliances. And last but definitely not least, our driveteam will be prepared for 300% to go full throttle at our matches for one big load of points! #omgrobots
Day 3 @ NYC - Qualification Matches
Yesterday we had our first qualification matches of the New York City FIRST Regional! With the first match having early in the morning, we had to get the robot through the inspection fast. This was accomplished very well, but because of some software bugs, the first three matches didn’t go 100% perfectly. When our software team fixed the bugs before we had qualification match 4, we were able to win our qualification matches 4 and 5! Because of those steady victories, we were able to climb the ranking to place 36. With our robot now ready to go full throttle, we will keep up the pace to storm the top 8! Don’t forget about the daylight saving time, so the time difference will be 5 hours tomorrow! We will keep you updated with the rankings and the possible alliances.
Day 4 @ NYC - Finals
And the big day is over! The third and last day of the New York City FIRST Regional! This last day of the regional we had 3 qualification matches and the finals. In the qualifications we were able to score high goals at a steady pace every match, but those points weren’t enough to win the matches and climb the rankings unfortunately. At the end of the qualification matches we ended at rank 46. We had some hope that the steady pace with high goals was a good opportunity for other teams to pick us for their alliance. But unfortunately this wasn’t our regional to shine at the finals. Nevertheless we had a blast watching the finals and the high scores which were a big pleasure to see. In the award ceremony we were blessed to take an award with us back home. We are delighted to announce that we won the Creativity Award at the New York City Regional! We can now hang back and rest a little bit the following days before we will be playing at the New York Tech Valley Regional upcoming Thursday.
Day 5 @ NYC | Explore NYC
Today we had a good walk around New York (stad). Unfortunately we had bad weather with a lot of drizzling rain. Nevertheless this little bummer, we had lots of fun with our sightseeing. First we took the metro to the World Trade Center, where we were very impressed by the 9/11 memorial. It made a big impact on some of us at how fast things can change in life in a blink of an eye. We also went to the Bull of Wall Sreet, Broadway, Grand Central Station, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Roosevelt Island Tramway. We ended the day at Times Square with a dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. Tomorrow we will have a day off for everyone and the team can decide what they would like to do.