VEX Worlds Robotics Competition!

Matthew and Megan were super excited to go to the Worlds Robotics Championship in Dallas, Texas. They spent a lot of time working on their robot and preparing for the event.

It was an amazing weekend! Also exhausting! We were getting 20000+ steps per day under mostly artificial lights in a convention center that was quite cold. It was cool to meet teams from all over the world. There was even a team from Belgium that U and Me spoke with. They were really nice and even showed us their Instagram page.

Mr. Flores, Diego, Megan, Alexander, Natalie, Matthew, Theron, Milo at the airport

Theron, Matthew and Diego on the plane

Mr. Flores and Madonna (Milo's mom) are a few rows behind the others.
3rd row back: Natalie, Milo, Megan, Candi and Nate (Natalie's parents)
2nd row: Theron, Matthew, Diego, Stephan & Tina (Alexander's parents), Alexander
1st row: Me, U, Tiffani (Diego's mom)
Photo taken by Catherine, Theron's mom

Our flight was about an hour late and so by the time we checked into the hotel and ate some dinner, it was after 11 and time for bed! We were up early Friday morning to head to the tournament.

Pioneer graveyard just outside the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center.

Diego, Natalie, Theron, Alexander, Matthew, Milo, Megan

On the way to our pit.

Our pit after we decorated it. Interesting fact: the stress balls that we gave away were color changing. We didn't know that since they were always white in Arizona!

Kid info and the mattes other teams signed.

Diego, Matthew, Megan and Milo at the pit.

Diego and Matthew talking to another team.

The opening ceremonies

U rescued this lizard.

Diego, Matthew and Megan getting ready for their practice match. Only 3 members per team are allowed at the field for each match.

You can see them on the screen and in real life at the same time. The competition was broadcast so family and friends could watch as well.

Matthew, Diego, Megan and Me walking back to the pits after the practice match.

Practice match score. They won!

Talking to an alliance partner.

Getting ready for the match.

Their bot scored during autonomous and so they won the auton bonus!

Matthew with the NASA display.

Megan with the NASA display.

Matthew, Diego and Megan walking back to the hotel.

We were up and headed to the Convention Center early Saturday morning.

Megan, Matthew and Diego before their first match of the day, which they lost.

They won the second match.

Won the third match. This was a team that the kids felt worked really well with them. Milo commented that they could match with them in the finals.

Our kids gave their alliance partners a scorpion keychain and team sticker for each kid. The Berserkers gave them a gift as well.

Matthew opening the gift.

Megan, Milo, Diego and Matthew show the contents of the bag: 2 pringles, 2 Kentucky ginger ales, 2 Kentucky candy bars, 4 tape chains, glow sticks and some candy.

Matthew, Milo, Diego and Megan with their bot.

Lunch outside! Natalie, Theron, Matthew, Mr. Flores, Alexander, Megan, Diego, Milo

Natalie, Milo, Diego, Theron, Matthew, Megan with Alexander on the horse.

Diego, Matthew and Milo headed to another match.

With a Chinese team that did not speak English. The teams communicated via google translate. The Chinese team was very nice and did a good job advocating for themselves despite the language barrier.

They won the match.

Diego and Matthew at the practice fields with their last alliance partner of the day. They practiced autonomous and when our team's did not work the first time, they waited in line to practice again. It is nice that the teams help mentor each other.

Matthew, Megan and Diego at the last match of the day. Their autonomous worked!

And they won!

Matthew and Megan helping Team A with their bot before Team A's last match.

We went to Terry Black's BBQ for dinner. It was delicious!

Sunday morning, we packed up and stored our bags before heading to the tournament. We walked a scenic route.

Megan with big eyeball.

Matthew with big eyeball.

This big screen (AT&T Discovery District Media Wall) wall art was interesting. Melting Memories was the name of this particular piece and it was constantly changing with the movement representing the moment when a spark of memory occurred.

Diego and Matthew heading to the first meet of the day.

Diego and Matthew getting ready for their last driver controlled skills. The worker was super nice and encouraging.

At the end of the drive, earning his best score of 29. You can tell how happy Matthew is by the huge smile on his face. 

Matthew and Diego

Megan

Me, Matthew, Megan and U in front of the Innovate Division sign. (There were a total of 6 middle school divisions.)

Matthew and Megan

All the CUSD teams: 3 from ACP, 2 from Bogle and 1 from SanTan.

Megan, Diego and Matthew with their pit sign.

Final match results. It does not show the practice match which they won. Including that, they were 5-6, which is good considering they were a wild card entry.

Division rankings. Matthew and Megan's team is "The Nathans." "The Box" is the team from Belgium that ranked just below our team at the end of each day.

Division finals. It was cool to see the bots climb to the top of the ladder and put a ring on the high stake.

Theron and Matthew grabbed some rings and mobile goals once the practice and skills fields closed.

A few pictures of Megan and Matthew.

Alexander, Diego, Matthew, Theron, Megan and Natalie before the closing ceremonies. The red sticks were inflatables that you could clap together to make noise.

U on the big screen when they recognized the volunteers.

Me and Catherine on the big screen when they recognized the moms. Can you see Megan, Theron, Matthew and Diego in the row in front of the moms?

Matthew showing Diego some ideas for the new game. The game manual was released during the closing ceremonies and Matthew eagerly read it while we waited for our flight at the airport.

Write up in Bogle newsletter. They got a few things wrong, like there were about 500 middle school teams and the individual who spoke Mandarin to the Chinese team was not in the Dual Language Immersion program. Still, it was a nice write up.

Worlds was definitely a neat experience overall although we all came home exhausted. Our hotel room had issues which exasperated the situation. The first night, Me woke up to toilet water running from the room above ours into our bathroom. Disgusting! It was fixed the next day. However, the next night, Me woke up to a dripping sound in the bathroom a little before 1 am. We couldn't find any water coming into our room (it must have only been in the ceiling but it was quite loud). We turned the white noise up even louder and went back to sleep. The next morning, we switched to a room across the hallway. That night, Me woke up when the tv turned on around 3 am. Thankfully that was an easy fix!

Megan had a bit of a rough night the first night as she opted to sleep on some chairs so the other girls could each have their own bed. We got it figured out so that all the girls were in a bed the last couple nights.

Matthew had a lot of facial tics--winking, squinting and rolling of eyes, scrunching of mouth, hard blinks. Pretty sure it was a combination of stress and fatigue. He did not notice them until we asked him about them and he was able to do what he wanted to with the competition. We did encourage him to relax some between matches, although there really wasn't much downtime with talking to alliance partners, optimizing the robot, doing skills, etc. He really wanted to be involved in all of it.

Definitely a cool experience!