Team Number!

We have our team number for this coming year already! ...It's the lowest number we've ever gotten, that's exciting.  :D

We are team number 244!


Below is a list of all the team numbers we have had so far:

• #2659  -  (Year 2007, team name: Solar Revenge)
• #4184  -  (Year 2008, team name: Solar Revenge)
• #4801  -  (Year 2009, team name: T.E.A.M.)*
• #3176  -  (Year 2010, team name: T.E.A.M. F.I.R.S.T. Aid)**
• #4877  -  (Year 2011, team name: T.E.A.M. Temp-Assure)*
• #1544  -  (Year 2012, team name: T.E.A.M. Dose-E-Dough)*
• #244  -  (Year 2013, team name: T.E.A.M. Flash Drivez)*

*T.E.A.M. stands for Tackling Everything And More
** Our F.I.R.S.T. stood for Frequent Information Response and Safety Team

Amusing Finds *<:o)

We came across a few pretty interesting little things at our tournaments this year.

Below is a list of fun team numbers from our competitions:

• #1
• #3
• #434
• #6666
• #6000
• #60
• #6060
• #6061
• #7071
• #5599
• #4803 (Three years ago our team number was #4801)
• #1744 (Close to our team number)
• ...And of course, we can't forget ours! - #1544

Another cool thing: we met up with four teams that started as a team the same year we did. They were even at our first regional tournament in Madison six years ago. Unfortunately, this was the last year in FLL for two of the teams. Both of them are planning to move on as FIRST Tech teams though.

We were surprised to hear a couple teams and volunteers talking about our original team banner from 3 years ago that floated under balloons. They remembered it! ...But then again, who could forget?

Also interesting, the team that won champions at our state tournament, team VHS FIRST (Friends In Really Stylish Tuxedoes), is a homeschooled team. We enjoyed talking with them since most of us are homeschooled, too.

Right near our pit table at the state tournament, team Sh!ft1 had a very impressive pit display board. It was robot controlled! They had a three sided board configuration inside a cutout of their larger display board. By pressing the gray arrow buttons on an NXT brick, people could turn the three sided board set-up to see all sides. It's challenging to describe, but it was really ingenious!

...Wonder what we'll discover at future tournaments.

State

     As you know our team made it to state and we had two weeks to prepare for the tournament. Well now the tournament is over and we all had a lot of fun and enjoyed every moment of it. We finished the day with a second place award in research with seventeen types of research! After the tournament we all hung out and talked about how the tournament went and ate dinner and some ice cream.

     Our team will also be partaking in other events throughout the year. Such as a 4-H LEGO tournament, the Waukesha JanBoree, and the county and state fairs.

What a wonderful end to a great FLL season!

Avery

Click here for more pictures of our tournament.

State Preparations

Okay, the state tournament is just a hop, skip, and a jump away. We can't wait!

Guess what, we've had some thrilling recent developments for our project! Andrew Isham, an expert we contacted earlier in the season, has some connections that are interested in learning more about our project. Perhaps we'll actually get our idea implemented. Isn't that exciting?

This year, the state tournament is doing something a little different that they've never done before. They added a poster presentation for the Core Values interview and a Robot Executive Design Summary which is a short presentation for the technical interview. That means we have our work cut out for us.

We've completed the Core Values poster tri-fold board and we've made a presentation board for the technical interview, too. Now we just have to rehearse these two new presentations and the skit as well.

We're nearly ready!

We Did It!

Regional was awesome! We had so much fun. There were so many top-notch teams there.

All three interviews in the morning went smoothly and many judges visited our pit. We even got to help a rookie team that had no programming for their robot. We got programs working for them and they were able to score as highly as our robot for the first round!

...Not everything was perfect though... We lost our robot jig, download cable, and some of the attachments we use. Because of that, our robot was unable to score as highly as we had hoped. After all three robot rounds, we slipped from ranking 9th to 11th place. Not too bad, ehh?

Then finally came the awards ceremony! We were nominated for several awards and won....... the RUNNER'S-UP CHAMPIONS award!!! Afterward we headed to Culver's to celebrate.

Now we have 3 weeks to prepare for state.

Just Two Days Left

Can you believe it? The competition is TOMORROW! We are Ready! Our team name is #1544 T.E.A.M. Dose-E-Dough! Our innovative project for Senior Solutions is completed, and our team slogan is completed as well!

Our team has been working hard and is ready for the competition. Everyone is anxious as the day draws near. The preparations are nearly there and the robot just needs a little fine tuning.

T.E.A.M. Dose-E-Dough is getting ready to hear all those cheers for teams from all over the region! All the teams have worked hard and while we can't wait to tell the judges about our innovative solution, we can't wait to see what the other teams came up with too!

It will be a long, tiring, yet, exciting day and T.E.A.M. Dose-E-Dough is hoping to hear our name be announced over that huge, blaring speaker announcing the names of the teams that won various awards.

Tonight, we have one team meeting left to go over our lines for our skit, practice our interview skills, work on some team building exercises, and to fine tune our robot. Our team meeting tonight will be extra fun because we get to have a PIZZA party! Who doesn't get excited about that?

Avery

At This Week's Meeting...

Our team has decided on our project. We are going to be working on the details and the skit/presentation too. We hope to settle in and get busy now that we have decided on our project.

Our team is also working hard on the robot and the mission strategy for the robot competition and the technical interview at the tournament. We have programmed some of the missions and are working on others. We have decided also on the body of the robot and have some really good ideas for the attachments on the robot.

We are still accepting survey entry's. The survey takes about five minutes to fill out and is just some basic questions. The link for the survey was posted in a previous entry.

Thank you.