Our team arrived back in Waukesha feeling happy and exhausted at 2:30 this morning. It has been an incredible weekend and an incredible season. We could not be more proud of all the hard work we have put in and the growth we have accomplished as a team.

This weekend we made it to the quarterfinals in our division, placing eighth out of over seventy teams from around the world. In addition we are thrilled and honored to have been awarded the UL Industrial Safety Award at the international level. Congratulations to Lexus Stokes, our Safety Captain, for directing this program, and for winning Star of the Day at Championships.

Despite this success, coming home is a bittersweet feeling. For four months, this team has been a family, meeting for over 15 hours a week, eating together, laughing together, and working together. We have formed meaningful friendships, gained new skills, and created a special community where everyone is allowed to be incredible. Together, we have each grown and accomplished things we never thought possible.

After this point, we will continue to meet and prepare for next year, however meetings will be less frequent and the thrill of build season has officially passed. That being said, we look forward to everything we will be able to do this summer and throughout next year’s season.

It has been another exciting day at internationals. We are thrilled to be meeting teams from around the world, and making new friends. Walking through the pit, which holds around 600 FRC teams, there seems to be no end of people who are just like us: enthusiastic, tired, and in love with robotics.

As it was the final day of  qualification matches, we have finished the mass data collection system we simply call “scouting.” After scouting every team, for two days in row, and in over 100 matches, we are not quite sure whether or not we will miss creating the reports, or feel relived that our job is done.

We are also proud of our safety captain, Lexus Stokes, for receiving Star of the Day. This award is based upon peer nomination and it serves to recognize her exemplary work with safety. Lexus also received this award at the Wisconsin Regional this year, however it is a huge honor to be recognized at the international level.

Today was a long, busy day, but we appreciate every minute knowing that tomorrow we will be the last day of this season.

After our final match today we were ranked 27th in our division (two places higher than we were yesterday). This is a little dissapponting because we know we could do better, however it is not a bad place to be. We hope to be picked at alliance selection tomorrow and compete for as long as possible!

As anticipated, today was thrilling, filled with excitement and surprises. We met hundreds of new people from across the world and enjoyed being able to connect with old friends. Students from all subteams were at the top of their game today, whether they were fixing the robot, scouting other teams, talking to judges, doing safety demos, or any number of other critical tasks.

Still, some circumstances were not quite so happy. We have been spoiled this season by having a nearly invincible robot which almost never seems to break. Today we encountered various mechanical issues, including broken limit switches and encoder mounts, however through preventative maintenance we were able to deal with most of the problems before they became a serious issue. Our scores were not as high as we had hoped this morning, and we are currently ranked 29th in our subdivision. Still this is not a bad place to be. We look forward to continued improvement tomorrow.

One of the most phenomenal parts of FIRST is the atmosphere of gracious professionalism and how fun this makes the entire competition. It is always incredible to talk to other teams and hear about their aproach to this challenge or simply dance and have a great time with them in the pits. At the end of the day today, FIRST conducted an opening ceremony for teams at all four levels of championships (Jr. FLL, FLL, FTC, and FRC). There we truly got to experience what a huge organization FIRST is and the incredible impact it has had. Now, after dinner and and a short end meeting, students have settled down to get some much-needed sleep for tomorrow’s competition.

Today has been a busy and thrilling whirlwind of activity. We began our journey at 7:00 after a brief team meeting, then took a six hour drive down to St. Louis. There, the load-in crew prepared our robot for practice matches while the rest of the team got settled in at the hotel. It wasn’t until 5:00 that other team members were allowed into the pits to help set up our area, interact with teams, and finish preparations for today’s practice matches. We quickly passed inspection and not long after, had our pit set up. In addition, we have already interacted with a variety of teams from around the world.

The sheer number of people and teams here is staggering. There are seemingly endless rows of pits, and eight separate divisions of competition. Each of these divisions contains more teams than either of our two regionals. Competition is sure to be tough, but we are still proud of all the work we have put in and confident in our abilities as a team.

During our practice matches we encountered a few difficulties. We lost communication between drivers and the robot during the first match, and our “bump” mechanism completely broke during the second. We are confident that the first problem has been resolved, however it will take more time to fix the “bump” mechanism.

Tomorrow begins the first day of qualification matches. Each match is crucially important to our team. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and here on our website to stay updated on this intense, dramatic, and fun journey!

After months of hard work, CORE is finally ready for Championships! We can’t wait to meet the other teams and compete against the best robots in the world. Six hundred teams representing 46 states and 11 countries will be attending this championship event. CORE is thrilled to represent Waukesha in this elite group of teams.

Tomorrow we will leave early in the morning and take a six hour bus ride to St. Louis. There, we will participate in practice matches to get ready for qualifications the next day. After winning two regionals with one of the most robust robots we have ever created, we honestly believe that our team has never been so well prepared for an international competition.

To follow us at competition, go to http://championship.usfirst.org/. You can also find pictures and updates from the competition on our facebook page and on twitter.

Stay tuned for further updates! It is sure to be a thrilling weekend!

This past Saturday, March 21st, our team won the Wisconsin regional! We also won the UL Safety award and currently hold the twelfth highest score in the entire world! Going into elimination rounds, our alliance members were team 2826 “Wave” and team 2530 “Inconceivable”. Our alliance was able to score 216 points, the highest all competition. Both our team and 2826 were able to consistently stack totes five/six high with a recycling container on top. Our other alliance member, 2530 was able to pull recycling containers off the step which allowed for both us and our team member to continuously receive bins. Our team has a regional competition in Chicago next week as well as the international competition in Saint Louis in a month.

In semifinals match #2 we scored a record 216 points for the regional!

As of February 17th, buildseason is officially over. Our team is incredibly proud of everything that we have accomplished in these short six weeks. Two robots have been built, three awards have been submitted for, and each student on this team has discovered new capabilities as we took on this epic challenge.

Looking forward, we have less than four weeks until our first competition. Mechanically, we are working to create an auxiliary manipulator for our robot which we will add at the Wisconsin Regional. This will involve a significant amount more work, but in our effort to create an outstanding robot we feel it will be highly beneficial.

Chairmans is currently busy preparing various competition documents, communicating with sponsors, and writing the speech and video which are included in the chairmans award. Additionally, this week we shipped FLL robot parts to Costa Rica to begin the first robotics program in the country. We are thrilled to spread our impact internationally in this way and offer such an incredible experience to these students.

The end of buildseason is a bittersweet experience. On one hand, it is great to have a few extra hours to catch up with family and non-robotics friends after the intense pressure of the past six weeks. On the other hand, however, buildseason is a time of intense excitement, accomplishment, and community and we are sad to see its end.

We look forward to the excitement of competition, though we know there is far more to accomplish before our first regional.

A few weeks ago, C.O.R.E. went to Toshiba to present and show our robot to their employees. One of our mentors works at the company as a mechanical engineer, and set up a time to meet. When we were there, we were given a tour of the facility and given a little company history. Afterwards, we demoed our robot, allowed them to play catch with it, and answered any questions they had. At the end of the demonstration we were given a generous sponsorship, placing them among other gold level sponsors.

It was really amazing to see how many of the employees would have been on an FRC team if it was around when they were in high school. Overall, the day was a very productive, fun and educational not just for us, but for the employees as well.

C.O.R.E. 2062 would like to thank all who have supported our team so far this year. Specifically, we would like to highlight an anonymous C.O.R.E. alumnus who recently donated $5,000. This is quite a significant contribution, comprising about 25 percent of all of the donations that we have received this year. We thank this individual for their incredible generosity and commend them for their continued involvement in FIRST and our team.

However, we must also stress that donations of any size and at any time are greatly appreciated. This year in particular we have not been as financially secure as we have been in the past. We need our community’s support to be involved in FIRST; to prepare our students for their futures and spread STEM principles to those around us.

We hope that you will consider supporting C.O.R.E. 2062 for our current 2014 season. For more information contact our lead mentor Mark Spoerk at mspoerk@waukesha.k12.wi.us.

C.O.R.E. 2062 would like to extend a huge thank you to the student and adult volunteers from teams 1714 and 706 who were able to help out at our FLL tournament on Sunday Nov. 10th. It was a fantastic success, and we received nothing but good feedback from teams and parents! This is a very important event as it can serve to inspire many young children to pursue their ambitions concerning engineering and robotics while having a blast, and our volunteers helped to make that a reality. We had around 50 volunteers help run a tournament where 420 people attended, and we would not have been able to manage the tournament without the help of of these teams. Again, thank you for your time and enthusiasm!

Sincerely,
Team C.O.R.E. 2062