Duel On The Deleware!

Hello All,

Back on October 22nd 2016 at Salem Community College NJ, FRO attended Duel on the Delaware.  Duel on the Delaware is an off-season competition hosted by MOE (Team 365) and isn’t sponsored by FIRST, although, we did use the FIRST Stronghold field and the rules for the competition were almost identical to the official game manual.  

The purpose of attending was to introduce new Frolings to FIRST and what an actual competition is like.  We didn’t go heavy in scouting, only paper and pen. There were multiple pit team members, and drivers/operators were switched out often.  However, what didn’t change was team spirit!  As always, FRO cheered as loud as they could and some, including myself, lost their voice.  Alumni team members also came out to see us compete and cheer us on.  

As stated previously, the robot’s drivers were not very experienced, (excluding a previous year driver) so we didn’t go full force as we did in the season.  There were a few bumps, scrapes, and bent pieces of the SPT, but nothing major as far as problems go.  We managed to place 10th and were chosen by Tech Fire (Team 225) for their alliance and McDonogh Robotics (Team 4505)  was also chosen as our third alliance mate.  We moved swiftly through Quarterfinals and met our match in the Semifinals.  In our first match we lost by 4 points because Tech Fire was unable to scale and lost our second because we couldn’t scale.  This eliminated us from the elimination rounds.

This competition was overall a very successful one and a good teaching tool for new members of the team.  We would definitely consider doing this again next year.  We also learned valuable things about people and what adjustments need to be made for the season.