Qualifying Tourney -- (quick) RECAP
The kids did me proud today at the FLL qualifying tournament, and we got some very positive comments from the judges. I wanted to give you a quick recap, and let you know that a more detailed one with videos will be coming tomorrow.
There were a lot of lessons learned, the first of which is “nothing ever goes as planned.” This affected ALL teams, many of whom got zero (0) points on their robot runs. I will be talking to the kids about this on Monday (Dec. 5) when we have our next practice, the main point of which will be to reflect on our experience and think about next year.
Some quick bullet points and thoughts for next year:
RESERVE EARLY: We were allowed a total of five (5) practice times on the competition-style practice table, each 5 minutes long. Next year, we need to have a plan going in to the tournament of when we want to reserve the tables so that they do not conflict with our schedule and give us time to test and fix our robot between runs. Get to the sign up sheet early and reserve those times.
STAY: With the exception of about 30 minutes of downtime at lunch, we used just about every second of the day for practice and preparation; rookie mistake on my part: I now know that none of us can leave the tournament site for other activities and must be available to help the team practice.
FOCUS: We need to practice each presentation right before we do the official presentation for the judges. It’s always 100% better the second time around. Thus, we should NOT schedule a practice time right before a performance.
PATIENCE: Plan on things not going according to plan. Our practice score of 74 points done at RRI headquarters would have been tops if we would have reproduced it at the robot competition. But we ran into some hiccups during the tournament and even dropped, and temporarily broke, our robot. Core values teaches us to think of the solution, not the problem, and to work together to achieve it—in this case accepting that some pieces broke and calmly figuring out how to fix it. I hope the kids can take this disappointment as inspiration for next year (by the way, this specific “inspiration” is a Core Value that we can talk about during our presentation next year).
PROJECT PREP.: I now have the judges’ comments about our team performance in each of the presentations—Robot Design, Project, and Core Values—and can see the criteria they used. I will speak to the boys about this and we will use these criteria to better prepare us for next year’s tournament.
KEEP IT SIMPLE: We did very well on this by keeping our robot design simple. It wasn’t showy, but there were fewer things that could drop off it and or break. Other teams had complicated robots that didn’t work in a competition setting.
Even though our team did not get any awards, and did not qualify to the state tournament, we tied for the 4th highest robot score of the day – even with our robot glitching and/or falling from unplanned heights. I also saw a lot of cooperation and support among the team. Both great things to build on.
Look for more from me tomorrow. For now, take your little guy out for ice cream. They all deserve it!
