Day Nine -- Finishing Up the Competition

Clark, Jakob T., Tanner, Jakob S., and London.
We won our final match this morning at 9:45am, finishing with a 5-5 record, ranked 54th out of 100 teams in our division.  We were hopeful, but not expecting, to be chosen by one of the top 8 teams into an alliance to go on to quarterfinals.  We were not picked so our competition was over by 11:00 today.

Not such a great picture, but there we are in our final match.  FRC has been a very different experience than FLL was three years ago.  Our family all agreed that we enjoyed the FLL championship more than FRC.  It is much more international and more well rounded as far as robot, project, judging sessions and such.  FRC is more serious, intense, and focused solely on the robot.  As far as our time in St. Louis, we've spent much more time at the stadium and less time exploring the city.  Of course the robotics competition is why we came, so I suppose that is as it should be.

George frequently and quickly fell asleep when we were in the stadium.  It was very loud and overstimulating for him, so his defense was to sleep.  No complaints from me-- it did make it easier to keep track of him.

Sometimes he'd stay asleep even when we were on the move.

Here we are, somewhat disappointed, leaving the stadium after the alliance selections to go get some lunch.

Here is much of the team after the finals of our division.  The team had broken down and packed up the pit and loaded a bit of equipment into our van.
We are grateful for our relationships with these outstanding people.  We're all a bit wiped out after the last few days-- lots of noise, crowds, and not much down time.  Our family has been away from home for over a week and we operate best in our routine.  I, for one, am weary of keeping track of people.  Our children and all the kids that tagged along with us on our adventures were very well behaved, but even still I was constantly checking to make sure we had everyone.  I want my fenced backyard!  Looking forward to many hours in the car over the next couple of days where everyone will sit and have some time to decompress.