Week #?? : Losing track

It is officially crunch time. It's been a few weeks since I updated our status here. We've had a Halloween gathering. It was nice getting together and celebrating as a team. We had some good food, drink and games. If memory serves, the adults won at Gestures. Don't be too sad for the kiddos, they enjoyed a new 3 in 1 Lego set, candy, a pinata filled with more candy and of course costumes. Team mascot Simba loves parties, but wasn't the best canine Yoda.

Our preliminary videos have been created. We've submitted our videos for our regional Practice Tournament. We're so thankful that we were able to participate in the practice tournament. It has been an invaluable lesson. Creating the videos has shown us how much the team has learnt. The most challenging Core Value has been Teamwork. The kids are slowly learning this…at least this is the hope. Mostly, the practice tournament has prepared us really well for the upcoming Qualifier.

Core Values

Each team member choose two Core Values and were asked to write about them. This was a great success. All the boys wrote amazing accounts of the Core Values and how those values were exhibited and affected our team throughout this season. So well was their writing that it translated directly into the Core Values video section.

“Together Everyone Achieves More (TEAM).”

Innovation Project Ideas

The Innovation Project was the first of the main video segments that we were able to finish. We shared our idea in an email to Invictus Active the company that provides a wheelchair trainer. We are happy to report that the co-founder Scott Smith was kind enough to reply back. We have sent him further details about our Innovation Project and are hoping to include his feedback in our final video presentation.

Missions / Runs / Robot Game

Practice Tournament: 7 missions, 3 runs, 1 Robot Game. We submitted our video with the expectation of 175 points.

Run 1 (M03 <Slide>, M04 <Bench>, M05 <Basketball>) - With our late in the season learning of how to line follow, this run has been reprogrammed a few times. So much so that the last reprogramming happened between our latest meetings.

Run 2 (M02 <Step Counter>) - After we learned about this mission model more and redesigned the attachment, this mission as been working well.

Run 3 (M06 <Push-up Bar>, M08 <Boccia>, M07 <Dance Floor>) - Simplifying this run by focusing on missions close to the launch area has proven to be a good strategy. We're seeing consistent results. Working on these missions and others near the east of the mat is when we first implemented line following.