TL;DR
The 1st Delaware State VEX Championship was amazing. Team Dover ROCKS!
This is a summary of the day from my view. I had a blast, I met and talked to teams, got to meet some VIP’s, saw some amazing robots in action.
At 0610, I drove into the hangar to find Steve Rhoads (STEMRobotics) Mike Fleck, Bob Whalen, Cheryl Foster and Siri Manley from the VEXMEN busily unloading and setting up the last two competition fields. At 0630, Jim Crane and his UHaul of equipment from Delaware County Christian Academy arrived, along with 20 Airmen from the 436th. We were in full setup mode!
At 0730 Joe Perrotto (First State Robotics) and MSgt Arnall (Team Dover) were at registration and inspection as the first sets of Roboteers came in. We were officially open. Student volunteers from the VEXMen helped with the inspection process and we soon had a steadily growing list of inspected and ready to play robots. We ended up with 37 teams at the event.
At about 0745 a super loud buzzer began to sound. And the hanger doors started to open into the early morning sky. I’ve seen it in movies, but it does not compare to seeing 75 foot tall doors open up 300 feet wide so you can see a row of C-5 Galaxys on the tarmac in person. All activity stopped as we watched.
0800 We now have the full contingent of airmen volunteers that we divided up into teams. Andrew Adaman and Melissa Quigley took 10 airmen and 5 parent volunteers off for judges training. Our two referees, Siri Manley and Dan Troy took the scoring team off to explain the game. Bob Whalen set up queuing while I collected the last 4 airmen to train on field reset. Jim and Steve were at the scoring table setting up the main system.
0830 was the drivers meeting. Over half of the 37 teams were at their first match ever. So we took some extra time to do explanation of key rule elements. We also introduced them to the refs for the day and explained how judging would go. At 0845 we did the same for all the mentors to make sure that everyone had the same expectations.
0900 Jennifer Vallee from DAFB community Affairs started our opening ceremony. The color guard presented the flags and we all stood for the national anthem. It’s a very impressive opening, one of the bonuses of being on a military base. Our opening speaker was Lt Col Douglas Jackson 436th Operations Support Squadron Commander. (He was allowing us to use his hanger)
By 1000 we had the display’s working, match lists printed and were running our first match. The fields were named Globemaster, Galaxy, Eagle, and WASP all Air Force names of importance. Morning competition was fierce, a number of matches with over 100 point scores. Great robots for the first week in October, when most teams only have a few weeks of build under their belts.
As always, we were behind at the start, but as the morning progressed we caught back up. Siri and Dan kept the action going and with Bob doing MC duties we were able to break for lunch at 1215, only 15 minutes from schedule. Lunch was served by the 436th Booster Club which supports activities on base for the airmen. I had the meatballs which were great and was informed that I had missed out on some of the best breakfast burritos ever. Something for my list for next year.
At 1230 The Dover explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team gave a demo of their remote control robot. They were able to pick up and score some Sacks and picked up a ping pong ball and drop it into a cup. Pretty impressive when you know that the driver is 100 yards away doing this via television.
And there was a little pressure, Col Richard Moore, the base commander (!!!) was watching from the sidelines. We appreciated the Col from taking time out of his schedule to come to the event.
At 1300 we started the last of the qualification rounds and opened the Tuskegee skills field. A number of teams showed their best efforts, but team 929W, Hereford High School, Maryland smashed the competition to walk away with both the Programming and Robot Skills challenge.
1400 the last qualification match is in the computer and our MC, Bob, starts the alliance selection process. I missed most of it while I was talking to Col. James Mercer the base Vice Commander and Larry Windley, Delaware Staff Chief from Senator Carpers office. We were very pleased with the high level VIP’s that we were able to have visit us.
I did hear some surprising declines in the alliance selection, with some high seeded team captains thinking they could build stronger alliances.
1430 the first elimination match started. We had been running 4 fields in rotation all day, so it was easy to assign the quarter final teams to a field and keep them there. It made for fast turn around times. Quarterfinals were soon over and we were in the semifinals. We would finish on time at 1600, pretty amazing for a first season event. But by my vocalizing this to Lt Col Trimillos from the 314th Recruiting Squadron, I doomed us.
The remote display computers were the first to start dropping off line. So Bob had to step up to announce the time remaining more often. And then the field control for the two semifinals died. Some quick testing was unable to figure out the cause. We broke out the VEX competition switches and with Jim running the blue alliance and me running the red, we did manual match control of the last semifinal.
1600 was the start of the first final. For me the best parts of the final set was Team 23D from Delcastle Delaware, driving a modified claw bot. Their mission was to score the two golds in the high goals and then flip sacks out of the opposing teams troughs. They had an amazing drive team that even with the short time they had been working they had perfected some of their moves.
They other was the intra VEXMEN rivals. Our newest 6th grade all girls team up against older siblings. There were some serious bragging rights on the line.
Finals 1 had the number 1 seed 929W from Hereford High, Maryland and 357 Royal Assault, Pennsylvania up against the number 3 seed 23D from Delcastle Delaware and 80J - VEXMEN:Jubilee, Pennsylvania. After some very intense play, the top seed took the win.
After a short break, Finals 2 was played with the #1 seed 81G VEXMEN:Gambit, Pennsylvania and #3 81X VEXMEN:X-23, Pennsylvania getting their chance to play. But it was the overwhelming play by 929W that carried the 1# seed to the win.
A pretty spectacular end to a great day of robotics in Delaware. Lt Col Trimillos from the 314th Recruiting Squadron did the honors in presenting the awards to all of our teams.
Special thanks to SWAG 3281A and B of York PA for walking the hanger looking for Foreign Objects (it’s an Air Force procedure where they line up and walk as a unit to sweep the floor of all objects. )
By 1730 the last van was packed and we were out of the building.
A pretty spectacular day for the 1st Delaware State Championship!
That’s the view from one of the practice fields? Nice…