And just like that, the season which started 222 days ago is over. RoBovines has two new alumni, and many new friends to reach out to and share ideas with. Soon we will all pack our rooms, get in cars, and walk on planes to make the trip back home. Hopefully at some point we will find some time to reflect on the week, take pride in what we accomplished… and catch up on some sleep!

When we all get home, there are some questions we are guaranteed to be asked.

Did you have fun? Definitely!

Was it hard? Absolutely!

Did you win? Well… That depends…

RoBovines had an even split of robot game wins and losses and ended exactly in the middle of our division. We had some parts break, and some code fail, but the robot made it through every match, and the intake worked perfectly.

The team met a LOT of new people from across the world. We donated electronics to a team from Nigeria, and we met a new team from Jamaica that we helped with code, and hope to mentor next season. We found other teams we want to reach out to about their designs and code, and we met teams who want to learn more about our code.

FIRST is not a program about metals or scores, it is a program about learning and success. Winning here is when the students on the team go on to be better future leaders in Science, Technology, Engineering, Media, Management, and anything else they may set their minds to. Anyone who has seen the RoBovines this week will tell you they have won easily by those standards!

We had a Deans list finalist, We received a Woodie Flowers Gracious-Professionalism pin, We saw the team operate with little to no input from their coaches and mentors (with only a couple of cases where they needed to be reminded to “Shake It Off!”)

We also got to watch our friends TARDIS and SharkBots be captains in their divisions and get think award nominations! It was so cool to have the three awesome teams here from Excelsior, and we even had a mentor from our region, Paul Dohn, be a Comps Award Finalist!

We already have plans of things to do when we get home, like hosting a banquette for our donors, open-sourcing our autonomous pathfinding code, and planning for the county fair and STEM-week. We also have plans to do a major clean-up to the trails at 4-H, and to work on creating a Maker-Space, including a milling machine; which has been a goal of ours for multiple years now!

For now though, we sign off. A great week was had by all, and the next season is just beginning!