Power Up and Game On!!!

The 2018 season has started!  The AZTECHS Robotics team is fully charged and getting ready for these 6 weeks of energy Vampires.

 We just finished hosting our very own Kick Off here at Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School. We were honored to host more than 25 teams - three of those teams being original sustaining teams. <Put an explanation of what makes an original sustaining team>

 Starting at 9:00 am we had classes that many absolutely wonderful and talented volunteers held for everyone in attendance. While we waited for the count down to this season, many ran around trying to get answers to the scavenger hunt we had put together for all the students. The scavenger hunt consisted of fourteen questions about the different teams in attendance at KickOff. In order to get the answers, students had to go around to the different teams. This was a great opportunity to get to know each other and some fun facts about the different teams!  We had three winners - Brianna Williams from our very own AZTECHS 157, and Grace Audette and Zoe Saldana both from team Andromeda One 4905.

 We all gathered in the auditorium and anxiously counted down along with the live stream from FIRST in Manchester, NH. Not a peep could be heard as the game reveal went on!  After the game reveal yon you heard people saying “HOW?!?!” and “WHAT?!?!” as the FIRST people went through the game.

 As the video ended you could see the power surge of people move quickly down the hallway to the cafeteria where there were mock-ups of the game elements. We quickly realized that they were a lot larger than we all would've guessed from the reveal. The teams were also able to pick up their Kit of Parts that they’ll need to start building their robots.

The very next day AZTECHS 157 started doing strategy sessions and this week are all ready prototyping parts of the robot. We are hoping to be 90% done by February 6th, so the programmers can start to program the robot and not rush to reach the time limit with only seconds to spare.  This will give us time to practice with the robot and prepare for our competitions.  In our next blog, we will provide an update on the build process!