It started on Wednesday, February 29,2012  as we raced the storm to Manchester. Thursday and Friday saw amazing qualifying rounds by Betty, our faithful ‘bot, who ended up winning the XEROX Creativity Award as her elegant autonomous mode delivered astounding, consistant results. Additionally, our good friend Ralph Newell won the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award, the highest honor possible for an individual to win at the Granite State Regional.

Regional Finals on Saturday saw the team rocket to the top and take home the gold with our alliance partners, FIRST Team 131 – CHAOS and FIRST Team 1831 The Screaming Eagles of Gilford, NH. Hence, all three teams qualified to attend the 2012 Championship event in St. Louis.

Five FIRST Maine Teams attended the 2012 Championships six weeks later. The posse traveled to St. Louis; Team 58 was joined by FIRST FRC Teams 2648 Infinite Loop, and rookie team  3930 S.M.A.R.T., FIRST FLL Teams 4447 The Pickle I Ate This Morning, and 7069 Sunnyside Up. In St. Louis, we were joined by our Granite State Regional Alliance partner FIRST FRC Team 1831 The Screaming Eagles.

We all rocked as hard as we could and at the end of the weekend the results are as follows:

• FIRST FLL Team 4447 The Pickle I Ate This Morning finished 7th in their division
• FIRST FLL Team 7069 Sunnyside Up finished 59th in their division
• FIRST FRC Team 58 The Riot Crew was seeded 7th out of 100 on the Curie field
• FIRST FRC Team 2648 Infinite Loop was seeded 3rd out of 100 on the Archimedes field
• FIRST FRC Team 3930 S.M.A.R.T. was seeded 53rd out of 100 on the Newton field
• FIRST FRC Team 1831 The Screaming Eagles was seeded 39th out of 100 on the Galileo field.

All teams played fair with Gracious Professionalism and had a great time, even when a tornado dropped into town to say hello. We all stayed inside and watched the final awards and elimination matches on the Einstein field.

After all that excitement and sightseeing there was but one last high point to be found in the weekend as we happily, yet tiredly, made our way home on Sunday. Doctor Woodie Flowers was booked on the same flight as we were! Many of the team members got the opportunity to have their picture taken with him and Zoltar, our team coach, got his hat signed.

For more information about the FIRST Championship event head on over to US FIRST or TMCnet news who provided excellent writeups for the event.

The next team meeting will be Monday, May 7th, when we will begin our “corkscrew” retrospective of the year and begin planning for next year.

Fundraising:

Monday March 26: Willows restaurant in South Portland will donate a portion of their proceeds between the hours of 4-9 for every single person that eats at Willows. Please eat at Willows Monday night and encourage your friends, family, and neighbors to as well. For those of you that don’t know where Willows is, it’s located on: 1422 Broadway, South Portland

Mandatory Student Fundraisers:

Saturday March 24: We will be going out to businesses in the community asking them to sponsor us. This is a mandatory event. Students need to be at the robotics building no later than 9 a.m.

March 30: There is a fund raiser at the Night’s of Columbus Church on St. John’s street near the robotics building. This will be sometime in the late afternoon/evening. Times are still unknown. An update will be sent out as soon as we know what times to be there. This is also mandatory.

April 7 and 14: The team is having a car wash at NAPA in South Portland. All students must attend. More details to follow.

If anyone can’t attend these events please let Jacub know ASAP. Email him at e.jacub@gmail.com

- Gilead

Fundraising Notes:

The Willows Fundraiser is next Monday (26th).  Eat at Willows from 4-9 and a percentage of the profit will go to the team.

******Mandatory Student Fundraisers (Students must attend all events)********* 

Not attending these events will effect you going to Championships, the money/time will need to be made up.

Please let Jacub know if you can not attend these fundraisers. (e.jacub@gmail.com)

This Saturday we will meet at the robotics building at 9 on Saturday.  We will be reaching out to local businesses in groups.  We will be driving around South Portland to all the local businesses.   This is mandatory!

There will be a car wash at NAPA in South Portland on the 7th of April.   Times for the event will come later.

On the 30th of March there will be a fundraiser at Nights of Columbus Church on St. John’s street.  (Near the robotics building). Times for the event will be later in the evening, we will let you know the exact time at the next meeting. Please mark the date.

Jacub and Harel

On Monday March 12 there will be a mandatory student run fundraising meeting. Everyone needs to go to help plan how we are going to raise the money to get to St. Louis.

Our Next meeting is tomorrow Saturday March 10 at 9:00 A.M. We are meeting every day for the next few weeks.

Thank you for reading this email,

Gilead

Students:  Please let Jane Martin know a definite YES or NO about going to Saint Louis ASAP (by tomorrow March 8th)  for a headcount.

Contact Jane at    smartin1@maine.rr.com    799-3102

Wednesday, April 25th we are leaving and are returning on April 29th which is the week after April vacation.  There will be school missed and students are responsible for the work they missed.

Parents and students – we need you to come to a  meeting to get information and to understand what is involved.  It is too complicated to explain through an email.  Your help is essential!

We are organizing ways to make money. Contributions are gladly accepted!

Jack Loring for Team 58

In Friday’s awards ceremony our robot, Betty, received the Creativity Award Sponsored by Xerox for her unique and effective arm which holds a nearly 100% accurate scoring ability for a practically guaranteed 6 points per score attempt. Her autonomous programming which allowed her to score with incredible accuracy during the 15 second hybrid mode was also praised as being instrumental in winning the award. Betty scored 169 out of a possible 180 during the autonomous throughout the competition; this was easily the best autonomous performance out of the 50 robots competing.

But that’s not all!

Our very own Ralph Newell, who has been with the team from the very beginning, won the highest honor possible for an individual to win: the Woodie Flowers Finalist award! It was excellent seeing the man who has been a mentor to us all, who has held the team together through thick and thin, be recognized for everything he gave to us. Congratulations Ralph!

But did we stop there? Oh no we did not!

After finishing the qualification rounds as the 8th seed we were picked by the 1st seeded FIRST Team 131 – CHAOS as an alliance partner. Joined by FIRST Team 1831 The Screaming Eagles of Gilford, NH we went on to work our way through the elimination matches and emerged victorious as champions!

For those of us who want to relive our victory, check out these videos provided by danaphery of YouTube.com

First, the students who’s sweat and effort, with maybe a touch of blood here and there, put our robot together.

Next, our coach who sets the course for the team and makes sure that we all are marching in more or less the same direction.

Let us not forget, the mentors and teachers who patiently guided and assisted the students in their efforts, and gifted us with the knowledge we needed to proceed.

Of course there are the parents, who provided transportation to our meetings and food to eat on those long Saturdays.

Last, but not least, Fairchild Semiconductor and all of our sponsors. The funding you provide to our team makes it possible to register for competition, to buy the materials needed to build the robot, to travel to our regional to compete, and to purchase all those thousand and one other little essentials that keep this team running smooth.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this build season! Our work may be far from over with competition looming ever closer, but we can all take a deep breath and say: “Damn, that is one fine ‘bot we built there!”

I look forward to seeing you all at competition!

Visit YouTube to see the full video and other videos posted by the RiotCrew.