FIRST World Champs!

Hey all,

FRO did a thing! FRO just got back from the FIRST World Championships in St. Louis, Missouri and had a great time.  We left on Tuesday night in a charter bus (thanks for the donation!) that arrived at the Dome of America around 3 o’clock and sent a small group to get the pit and robot set up for the next day.  The rest went to check in at our hotel room where we were going to spend the next few nights.  The following day’s matches weren’t terrible for us, but were not great by any means whatsoever.  Scouting also went smoothly with everyone following the shifts and picking up others shifts when they were not there for their own. I personally went down into the pits and snagged myself a sweet pair of Google safety glasses.  I also went around and picked up some new pins from the different teams, especially the teams from foreign countries.  It was so interesting to talk to teams from such varying countries who didn’t speak English as a first language. The next day the rolls for matches were not in our favor.  We repeatedly lost matches and only won one match the entire day, which I missed due to being at scholarship row learning about various colleges.  It appeared that picking our alliance partners just wasn’t in the cards for us, unlike previous competitions;  however,  we were picked as a third round pick for the Seventh Alliance!  We made it past quarter finals,  but unfortunately, we were eliminated in the semi-finals, ending our absolutely amazing season.  While some would see this as a defeat, we see it as a worthy sendoff to a more than glorious season.  After this the finals were played and we would like to congratulate the winners of the FIRST World Championships.

On behalf of Team 5401, I would like to thank the parents, sponsors, Bensalem Education Foundation, the Bensalem School District and everyone else in between for allowing us this once in a lifetime opportunity.  Also thank you to all to all the mentors for teaching us so much and investing so much time into us. Maybe you’ll even coming back to be a mentor!  Anyway it has truly been a great season and we look forward to what the future will bring!

Gavin Hinshaw