Our team went to the regional competition, the Garden State Rumble, at the College of New Jersey on December 3rd, 2006. We had a lot of fun!
Our team was assigned a table in the pit area to work on our robot. After "setting up camp," we practiced in the practice fields before the opening ceremonies.
We went into the judges room so they could look over the robot and ask us questions about the robot and the design process. They also looked at the laboratory notebook. Our laboratory notebook won the Think Award at this competition.
After we finished the judging session, it was time for the qualification rounds. They were very exciting. Max did very well, and we went undefeated. We placed third in the ranking.
After the qualification rounds, we picked our alliance partners. We had one of the few female team "captains" who went up to pick alliances. We picked Team Driven-Bolts and Team πoneers to be on our alliance. We met with them and discussed strategy for the competitions we would be in. We were very good together and won all but one match in the final competition. We won the regional which qualified our alliance to go to Atlanta, Georgia for the International Competition. We also won the Think award for our Engineering processes and Notebook. Other awards given out at the regional were: the Inspire award, the Innovate award, and the Connect award. We applaud the other teams who received these awards. Team 2073, Driven-Bolts, also came up with the name for this competition - "The Garden State Rumble!" Here is a picture of James holding the two trophies we received.
The family members of Team Overdrive who came to the competition had a blast as they watched and cheered on our team. The younger siblings of the students had fun cheering on the team in between playing with each other. Sometimes the cheering sounded more like yelling! The siblings, along with Team Driven, had to be the loudest cheering squad there. Here is a picture of the students, their families, and the coaches and mentors.
