FIRST Robotics Competition Utah Regional

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (March 12-14) was the Utah Regional competition for Clark's robotics team.  After the excitement at last year's competition, we were all really excited to go watch.  The biggest day of competition is Saturday, but the rest of the family had dress rehearsals for our play, so we made Friday our big day of watching competition.
We brought a couple of the team coach's children along with us because a sibling of theirs was sick.  Very sad for their mom who was so excited to come cheer on Prototype X.

With Andrea-- we've spent many, many hours watching robots together over the years.

Getting ready for one of our first qualification matches.

Qualification matches are played with an alliance of three teams versus another alliance of three teams. These alliance constantly getting switched up throughout the day.
I'll save you the suspense of waiting through the whole post.  After 12 qualification matches over Friday and Saturday, the team ended up in fifth place by noon on Saturday.

In the alliance selections, Prototype X was the first team selected by the third ranked team and we joined up with team 2122, the Tator Bots from Idaho.  The third team to be picked for that alliance was from Spanish Fork.

In the end, the finals were between the alliance containing the top two ranked teams and our alliance.  We didn't win it all, but our team did very well and they were pleased with their performance.  

They will be competing again in Phoenix, AZ  in a couple of weeks.  According to their scouting efforts, they believe the competition will not be quite as fierce as it was in Utah.  For the record, we were the top team in Utah. 

Wandering the pits is the highlight of the event for the little kids.  They love seeing the robots and collecting the swag from all the teams.  Out of our younger children, George particularly treasures his collections. 

Safety first in the pits.  Everybody has to wear safety goggles--even cute little Peter.  He kept them on a little longer than I expected.

So the team doesn't have a ticket as of yet to the World's Competition in St. Louis at the end of April.  Hopefully, they'll earn a spot in Phoenix.  But either way, at least they have a safe pit:)