On Saturday we held what we think is the first VEX competition at NIGHT. We were at the Kohelet Yeshiva HS, Marion Station PA. 34 Teams competed for slots to go to the VEX World Championships. (44 teams had competed in the league qualifying events)
Doors opened at 6PM. Since we had done alliance selections by E-Mail and phone all we had to do was inspect robots and have a drivers meeting. Promptly at 7:20, Head Referee Bob said 3-2-1 GO and we were off.
Since the Eastern PA teams are about 1/2 way through the competition season with ~400 matches played, the level of the robot’s ability was pretty high. Most robots at this point can collect and score multiple items at one time. We even had a wall bot to play defense.
There were a number of high scoring matches that took sudden downward turns with the negator barrel scored.
We played on four fields and followed our policy of “last teams to play reset the fields”. We got very good turn times. Once we got into the semifinals we did have teams take timeouts to do repairs.
Awards were given (see list below) and Lt Col Ric Trimillos from the Air Force was also there to give very nice backpacks to the 3 finalist alliances and shirts to the roboteers from Kohelet. He also handed out foam fighter jets which were soon airborne.
Saturday a great evening, we were packed up and out of the building by midnight!
I want to thank our core group of Volunteers and for making the Technomage League be one of the more popular events: Jim, Andrew, Chuck, Melissa, Mike C, Pat K, Beth, Matt and Bob; they were the core of our judging, refereeing and computer system.
Thanks also to parents from all the teams that were dragooned into service. Without them scoring, queuing, judging, setup and tear-down we would not be able to make the League happen. Kudos to all the people that ran workshops in the morning before the afternoon matches. One of the best things about the teams that come Eastern PA events is they are a community, with everyone pitching in events go well. A shout out to two NJ teams: Driven Bolts, and the Army of Two. They drove 2.5 hours to compete, they came early to setup and stayed late to tear down (and score, judged and gave the event staff bagels!)
Special thanks to Steve for lugging the playing field around to all 6 of the league events, doing setup, computer scoring and field control.
Last thanks to Kohelet Yeshiva HS for holding two qualifying events and the League Finals. It was a pretty impressive showing for a rookie team to hold 3 events.
Excellence Award
777B Christopher Dock Mennonite High School, Lansdale, PA
Tournament Champions
169A The Haverford School - Haverford, Pa
169E The Haverford School - Haverford, Pa
Judged awards
Build Award 81S Sabertooth VEXMEN Downingtown PA
Think Award 101 Radnor Robotics Radnor PA
Amaze Award 80R Rogue VEXMEN Downingtown PA
I know by the end of a normal competition? at like, 5? Some parents/mentors/chaperones are already pretty tired. So how do we convince them to stay up pretty late?