The team competed in our second competition (all teams get two competitions in which to try to make it to the district championship at Lehigh University) last weekend.  It was a truly terrific time.

Just like our first competition, we made it to the semi-finals.  This gives us enough points to make us a near certain lock to qualify for Lehigh.  (We have to wait until the all of the teams is the district have completed in two competitions to be sure.)

Here is the team in the pit. 

The drive team concentrates on a match. 

We ALMOST did not make it to the semi-finals. 

The three-team alliance must win best out of three, against the opposing three-team alliance.  Our alliance lost the first round, won the second round….then we lost the third round by 3 points L  However our alliance partner realize that there was a scoring error.  The student captains had to take their concerns to the judges.  After much discussion it was determined that, without the error, we would have won.  The rules state that the match must be replayed.  Excitement rippled through the team.  We ended up winning the rematch with a huge margin.  

Fun in the stands early in the day--                          

    Things get pretty intense as the completion heats up.

Off the field--the team was proud to nominate two juniors, Bill Green and Sunny Rooney to the Dean’s List—ok not the type of Deans they have in school, this is named after FIRST founder Dean Kamen.  It is a prestigious award to win.  This year, for the first time, the nominees had to be interviewed by a team of judges.  Both of our candidates received high praise from the judges.  Four students were selected from all the nominees in this round of competition to move-on to compete at Lehigh District Championship.  Bishop McDevitt student Bill Green was one of the four chosen.  If he is selected at Lehigh as a finalist he would head off to St Louis, for the FIRST Robotics Nationals. Congratulations to both Bill and Sunny and good luck to Bill as he moves forward in the selection process.

The drive team watches a match while in the match queue.