Saturday, November 20, 2010

November 20

The B.E.S.T. Robotics competition is done and over. Teen will be traveling home at 6am tomorrow and should arrive here somewhere around 11pm. Yes they have school on Monday. Sure hope he doesn't have to work Monday as that will make a very long day for him.

The placed somewhere in the 40's out of 61 teams. They are a little disappointed but here are some facts.

This is the very first year that our school has had a team compete. This program was started in 1993. Therefore some of these teams that he competed against have been doing this for 17 years. I think just the fact that this is their first year and they were able to beat out 18 regional teams to make it to Auburn, Alabama. There were only 60 other teams that made it.

There were 8 rounds and each of the 13 students had to take turns playing or cheering/sitting out. Teen was in 3 rounds. During the final round that he was in, he had to start with a 20 second penalty from an error the prior students made. When it was time for him to start he somehow jumped the robot backwards and it went out of bounds therefore disqualifying them from that round.

Teen took his error pretty hard and when they walked off the stage he walked out of the arena for some air. I knew he was upset and called him. He would kill me for telling you this but he walked outside because he was crying. See he did the programming on the robot and in his mind two things happened. First the team was counting on him being able to make up for that 10 second penalty and second he had no idea what happened that the robot jumped and went out of bounds. So instead of gaining points for the team he lost them.

I talked to him and tried to explain to him that there were 8 rounds. He didn't make them lose points for the other 7 rounds so one error in one round that he was involved in did not make the whole team fail. The whole competition was a group effort and shouldn't fall on his shoulders alone.

I wish that I would have been able to be there and to give him a big old hug, dry his tears and make him feel better. It broke my heart knowing that I couldn't do anything to make it right or better.

But after I got off of the phone with him, I realized that this is about to happen more and more in his life. He will soon be graduating and living at college. I won't be right there to pick up the pieces. All I can do is talk to him, give him encouragement, listen to him and love him. And above all of that pray for him.

Stacy

1 comment:

Chris said...

I completely understand Teen's feelings (been down that road several times), but you're exactly right. It's a team effort. He wouldn't have tried to take the glory if they had won big, so he shouldn't shoulder the burden of any losses. And for the team to place in that high in only their 1st year of competition is an incredible accomplishment! They should be proud! Great job, Teen 7 company!