It is Saturday June 4, 2020. After having won the Chairman’s Award at the Wilsonville event, we got the opportunity to travel back to Washington, where we could once again be considered for the Chairman’s Championship event. After days and long nights of competitions, hotel game nights, and Panera Bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (what… we don’t have it up in Alaska, so we need to take every opportunity we can get), it came time for the final day. We could see the championship teams compete, take down our pit, and most importantly, watch as the Chairman’s award winners are announced. We drove to the competition, took a seat at the stands, and waited for the event to begin. Janine brought us Dutch Bros coffee, and we watched our final matches. Awards came around, and just before rapping up, the chairman’s award was announced. The emcee began discussing the “wide spans of land”, the “Riley Robot Book”, and “Booster Boxes”. Our heart rates rose, we began looking around, and then heard it “FRC 568 the Nerds of the North”. We jumped from the bleachers, hugged, celebrated, made our way down the stadium, high fived about 50 volunteers, and received our blue banner. The event concluded Sweet Caroline by Neil Dimond playing, and eagerly packing up and getting ready for our flight home…
At least that was how we imagined it…
But as we know in engineering…
Nothing goes according to plan
Despite not having the celebration we hoped, we are thrilled and grateful to announce that we, along with FRC team 6831 and team 4125, have won the PNW Chairman’s Championship event. Instead of a 500 mile trip to Washington, we took a 5 yard trip to our laptops. Instead of our walk along the high five line, we had our faces highlighted on Zoom. And yet by the end of the day we still were able to celebrate our achievements, participate in a virtual event, and have plenty of ambitions for the future.
