For the past three days, my school's robotics team, the Flaming Chickens, has been busy competing at the FIRST Robotics Pacific Northwest Regional. To our great joy, our robot, "Fowler" (though we never called it that,) did exceptionally well. So well, in fact, that it managed a high score of 128 points in one match, and seeded 2^nd place in the qualifying match, the highest we have ever seeded and the FIRST time we made it into the Top Eight in our own right.*

We were asked to join the 1^st seed alliance by Team 948 (NRG), and we accepted. During the elimination rounds, we gradually fought our way up to the finals, where were solidly defeated by the Blue alliance. Although we were dissappointed, this is the farthest we have every come. Our rookie year we lost at quarterfinals, second year we lost at semifinals, this year we lose at finals, next year...?

Although not as satisfying as actually winning, we did get to run down to the field, high-five the judges and collect our two trophies. We also got silver medals.

After the winners got their medals (also silver), they all sat down and we waited while they announced the most important awards. I should point out that FIRST is about spreading the influence of science and engineering, and they give this more honor than simply winning the competition. For example, the Chairman's award, in their own words:

FIRST’s most prestigious award, it honors the team judged to have created the best partnership effort among team participants, and to have best exemplified the true meaning of FIRST. The award helps keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition on the goal of inspiring greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology.

As they described this award, I was pretty sure that we had not won it. After all, we didn't have a marketing department this year, our Chairman's award presentation had to be handled by members of our team who were already busy with getting the robot working. I also wasn't aware that we had accomplished much.

The announcer started discussing the winning team. When they mentioned that we had transformed our small Liberal arts school into one with an engineering program, I was pretty sure it wasn't us. However they made the comment, "This team won the Rookie Inspiration Award here in 2005," there was this moment where we were all counting off on our fingers, thinking, "wait, what year was that?"

"This years Chairman's Award goes to Team 1540, the Flaming Chickens"

YEAH!

We got to run through the stands, as the entire stadium cheered, and we high-fived everybody in our path. I ended up being first in line, so I got to recieve the first of the two hefty Chairman's Award trophies, and a gold medal. Returned to the stands and waited for the news to sink in. It still hasn't. We are going to Atlanta after all! DAMN!

After we returned to the pit area, we got a group photo with the trophies, and then went to pack up our robot to ship to the San Diego regional. We went to pack up our trophies, and discovered that the two trophies would not fit into the box we had brought for that purpose. What a tragedy.

Another awesome thing is that even though our alliance did not win, everyone of us won an award for something. Team 1778 won the Underwriters' Laboratories safety award, and Team 948 won some other award that I forgot already. However, our award is the only award that will get us to Nationals in Atlanta.

This will take a while to sink in...

* In our rookie year (2005), we seeded below the top eight. However, during the alliance selections, the top eight teams chose each other, and we got shifted up into the top eight.