Day 0 of 2018 Buildseason: POWER UP!

It is kickoff time. The kickoff to FRC 2018 build-season was held at Solano Community College (Fairfield Campus). Vanden Robotics invited Armijo, Buckingham and Vacaville High School. Thank you to Solano college board for providing a delicious breakfast. At about 7:30 the FRC Game release went live and we all watched in amazement as yet another ingenious game was presented.

After that each of the schools returned to their respective campuses. RoboVikes all gathered together and both rookies and veterans discussed the most important rules.Then, just as prekickoff practice, the whats were discussed for the game. They were greatly debated over and refined.

Then we broke into small groups and planned out the hows with drawings of either chassis, intake, shooter, and/or climb designs. Then each and every person presented their idea, whether fully developed or not, to the class. We documented every idea and discussed a bit. At that point though, most people were mentally drained so we called it a day and left our notes until the next day, Day 1.

Thank you to all the parents and mentors who supervised, carpooled and helped keep us sane in this process.

Pre Kickoff Practice

Kickoff 2018 is on January 6th and the game is known as Power Up. To prepare for that, a prekickoff practice was scheduled on January 4th 2018. Because of so many rookies on the team, it was decided that a practice kickoff day was needed to go over exactly how kickoff will work.

Leadership led the rookies and anyone who had not done kickoff before in a simulation of the 2016 game. They went over the step by step plan and applied that to the previous game. They broke down the manual and worked in groups to understand all the rules. Although these were rules for a different year and different game, a lot are consistent and it enforced the process. Next, as an entire group, we debated and discussed the whats and hows, speeding up the process a bit because it was practice.

You might be wondering what the veterans were doing during all this time. They were building all the shelves for the brand new pit. They worked very hard and very much as a team. Also they installed the 500lb tool box into the rolling pit structure, which was no easy task.

10th Annual VEX EDR Competition at Vanden

The tenth annual VEX EDR Competition was held December 9th, 2017 at Vanden. The participation and help from a large majority of RoboVikes and parents was phenomenal. As usual the RoboVikes completely ran the event for the some regular attending teams and also some new VEX teams.

This year was a little different from the past because the competition only included high school teams and not junior high. This means that Golden West RoboStangs were not competing therefore they were free to scout for our 8 competing VEX teams. Also that means that the RoboVikes that usually are busy mentoring for Golden West, could now volunteer to help run the competition.

Queing, led by Robbie Rossell, was amazingly speedy and prompt with the schedule. The final matches were quite competitive within the alliances. Despite some lack in gracious professionalism from different teams, the RoboVike referees were fair and amiable. Everything was supervised and organised by Tyus Green.

Thank you RoboVike parents for spending the day working in the concession stand and feeding everyone at the tournament. Your efforts were a huge help and greatly appreciated! Thank you student volunteers again for making this one of the most smoothly run tournaments that we've ever hosted.