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!