It’s a lot to feed this many teenagers and keep them entertained, lucky for us the mentors took us to All Aboard in Little Rock, Arkansas! We enjoyed watching the trains bring us our food, and it was definitely a cool stop on today’s trip.
Today is load in for the teams attending the 2019 Rock City Regional in Little Rock, Arkansas. Team 5437 is making a stop at the Arkansas Capitol Building on our way to load in. We wish luck to all the teams competing this week all all the competitions! Everyone out on the road, have all safe drive. We look forward to seeing everyone!
At the 2018 Rock City Regional in Little Rock, Arkansas our team received quite the unusual award. Imagine this: You are sitting in the stands with your team, anxiously awaiting to hear your team’s name announced as an award winner. Most of the awards are gone, and they have made it to Judge’s Award. As the description is read, something unexpected happens. It is announced that this year, for this regional, the Judge’s Award would be know as the “Change in State Award” to eminent this team’s work not only in their community, but all throughout the state. The speaker continues reading, and subtle hints are dropped throughout: “Autism Spectrum Workforce Evolution” the biggest hint of them all. You can feel the excitement rising among your peers. Then you hear, “Team 5437 the Rocky Balboabots!” You are ecstatic and rise to your feet, floating on cloud nine as you descend the stairs and high-five students and judges, beaming the entire time.
We are honored to receive this award and we thank everyone who has helped us along the way; our generous sponsors, our community, and those who donated money to our cause.
Congratulations to our friends the rookie team MPV Stingerbots from Mulberry, Arkansas on winning the Rookie-All Star award at the Rock City Regional! They are attending the Houston World Championship this year in April. We are so proud of you, you have come such a long ways this past year! Good luck, we look forward to seeing you there!
Qualification matches begin today at the Oklahoma City Regional. There are teams from five states in America along with a team from Mexico. Good luck to everyone, let’s get this thing started!
Mayor of Oklahoma City
A big thank you to all those who made this competition possible.
We are halfway through today’s matches for our team. We have seen a lot so far, including 3310 Black Hawk Robotics grabbing onto 2183 Tiger Bots, who had already climbed the scale! There are many talented teams here, so just what might the future hold?
A rare occurrence in these matches, a robot climbed the scale, and another climbed up them!
We are Team 5437, and this is us. We strive to change the world by impacting those not only in the communities around us, but also in communities miles away. We believe that through dedication, perseverance, and teamwork, anything can be accomplished. In our Chairman’s award, we tell of our humble beginnings as the underdog, and how we pushed through the hardships striking our town to assist in the attraction of the prosperous gazes of companies upon our promising area: All we needed was a chance to show it. These past three years have brought forth many new opportunities to the new generation of innovators living in our small town. Our collaboration with the businesses and companies around us, along with the government officials in our town and state, has provided us the chance to introduce the next generation of workforce members to careers they might not have known of. The shot we were given when we originally learned of FIRST opened doors we didn’t even know existed, let alone ones we could actually walk through, hand-in-hand with other low income, hardworking communities. We are honored to be affiliated with such a powerful and inspiring vision of the future.
Last week at FRC’s 2017 World Championship in Houston, we won some awards. Out of the three Engineering Inspiration Awards given out at the Houston Championship, we were one of the lucky teams to receive the award. Our ranking at the end of the Qualification Matches was 19th seed, however we were the 2nd pick of the 1st seed alliance. Our alliance fought hard and made it to the Finals on the Galileo field, where we sadly lost after winning the first match. However the international allies that we made are game changers for us. We made friends with fellow FIRST competitors from all over the world. This has opened a door for our small community and team that can take us anywhere. All of that we have learned from all of the brilliant from around the world is the prize that we have claimed. We consider ourselves blessed beyond words to have friend now on every continent on this planet!