UPCOMING EVENTS Our team is looking "on point" in our official team photo. A couple of weekends ago, Team 1718 The Fighting Pi competed in the 2017 FRC World Championship in St. Louis? America?s Center. After two days of heated qualification matches, the team held onto 12th place with an average of 2.2 Ranking Points. During alliance selection, 1718 was asked to compete alongside Team 75, the RoboRaiders, from Hillsborough, New Jersey and Team 340, G.R.R. (Greater Rochester Robotics), from Churchville, New York. The trio would later ask Team 6763, FUSION, from Manchester, New Hampshire to complete the 8th seeded alliance. With the alliances set, the 8th seeded alliance was scheduled to face off against the 1st seeded alliance, consisting of Team 2767, Stryke Force, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Team 254, The Cheesy Poofs, from San Jose, California, Team 862, Lightning Robotics, from Canton, Michigan, and Team 1676, The Pascack Pi-oneers, from Montvale, New Jersey, in the quarterfinals. The first match ended in a score of 522-395 in favor of the 1st seeded alliance. After talking with the alliance partners, Team 1718 decided to dedicate themselves to defense for the majority of the second match. Despite a strong showing of defense, the 8th seeded alliance fell short by a score of 509-445 to the alliance that would go on to be the World Champions. In light of the week as a whole, despite falling short of our goal, the team still made the most of the final trip to St. Louis for the World Competition. Though we are sad to see the closing of a longheld tradition of visiting St. Louis, we are excited to see what the city of Detroit has in store for 2018 as the FIRST World Competition comes to Detroit. From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to thank all of the parents, mentors, and sponsors for supporting us over this past season. It may not seem like much, but the support we receive makes going to a World Championship possible. Without you, many of the memories and experiences of over a decade of students would not exist. Team 1718 is infinitely grateful for all that you TEAM PHOTO ISSUE 13 VOLUME 10 MAY, 2017 WORLDS WRAP-UP BY - DYLAN CLEMONS MARC JUNE 23 RD -24 TH Welcome back to the Knockout News! MOMENT OF THE WEEK Our Chairman's Team Presented for the Chairman's Award at Worlds for the first time. NAC JUNE 25 TH -28 TH MAC MAY 30 TH
Transcript
UPCOMING EVENTS
Our team is looking "on point" in our official team photo.
A couple of weekends ago, Team 1718 The Fighting Pi competed in the 2017 FRC World Championship in St. Louis? America?s Center. After two days of heated qualification matches, the team held onto 12th place with an average of 2.2 Ranking Points. During alliance selection, 1718 was asked to compete alongside Team 75, the RoboRaiders, from Hillsborough, New Jersey and Team 340, G.R.R. (Greater Rochester Robotics), from Churchville, New York. The trio would later ask Team 6763, FUSION, from Manchester, New Hampshire to complete the 8th seeded alliance.
With the alliances set, the 8th seeded alliance was scheduled to face off against the 1st seeded alliance, consisting of Team 2767, Stryke Force, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Team 254, The Cheesy Poofs, from San Jose, California, Team 862, Lightning Robotics, from Canton, Michigan, and Team 1676, The Pascack Pi-oneers, from Montvale, New Jersey, in the quarterfinals. The first match ended in a score of 522-395 in favor of the 1st seeded alliance. After talking with the alliance partners, Team 1718 decided to dedicate themselves to defense for the majority of the second match. Despite a strong showing of defense, the 8th seeded alliance fell short by a score of 509-445 to the alliance that would go on to be the World Champions.
In light of the week as a whole, despite falling short of our goal, the team still made the most of the final trip to St. Louis for the World Competition. Though we are sad to see the closing of a longheld tradition of visiting St. Louis, we are excited to see what the city of Detroit has in store for 2018 as the FIRST World Competition comes to Detroit. From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to thank all of the parents, mentors, and sponsors for supporting us over this past season. It may not seem like much, but the support we receive makes going to a World Championship possible. Without you, many of the memories and experiences of over a decade of students would not exist. Team 1718 is infinitely grateful for all that you
TEAM PHOTO
ISSUE 13VOLUME 10 MAY, 2017
WORLDS WRAP-UP BY - DYLAN CLEMONS
MARCJUNE 23RD -24TH
Welcome back to the Knockout News!
MOMENT OF THE WEEK
Our Chairman's Team Presented for the Chairman's Award at Worlds for the first
time.
NACJUNE 25TH -28TH
MAC
MAY 30TH
FIRST YEAR REFLECTION BY: LAUREN CLEMONS
This past year was my first year on The Fighting Pi. As a freshman it was pretty intimidating joining a team of incredibly smart kids who I didn?t really know. I walked in on the first day unsure of what part of the team I wanted to be on and having little knowledge of how the team works. I hopped around between media and strategy trying to figure out which I liked best. I was able to gain even more knowledge of our team when I had the chance to present for the Engineering Inspiration Award at the Michigan State Championship this year. This was a big step for me because I?m a pretty shy person. With the help of the other presenters and one of our mentors, Mrs. Brice, I was able to present to judges with confidence, something I wasn?t able to do before.
This year was such a great year for our team and I?m beyond happy I was here to experience it. Our team winning the 2017 Michigan State Chairman?s Award will be something I will look back on for the rest of my life. This team puts in so much time and effort to get to where we are now it amazes me.
I?m so happy I walked through those doors to join a team where I would not only learn things I didn?t know previously but meet the people who would turn out to be my best friends.
I?m looking forward to this upcoming season to make many more memories and accomplishments with my team. I?m sad to say goodbye to our seniors who I truly look up to, but I?m excited to bring in a new group of freshmen who are going to be in the same place I was this year. I hope I can lead and teach them the same way I was taught from our amazing upperclassmen and extraordinary mentors.
Presenting Chairman?s at the World Championship offers an experience completely different to that of any other level of competition. At this level, so many teams have achieved so much it becomes difficult for judges to separate the teams. They are able to do this through their questions that they ask the presenters. World Championship Judges dig much deeper into what events your team participated in and what they accomplished. They attempt to find any detail that could put you one place higher or lower than any other team. This is the main reason why giving our presenters a chance to present at the World Championship was so important. It
allowed them to get the experience of presenting that is only available at the championship.
Also available at the World Championship are the Seminars which are put on by FIRST. At the
seminars, teams from around the world apply to present on a topic they believe their team does well offering the opportunity for other teams to learn and modify their own eam to improve. While at the championship, a couple of our students presented at the Advocacy seminar on our upcoming Michigan Advocacy Conference. Our students presented alongside members from several other teams including 1816, 1676, and 27 as well as Don Bossi, the president of FIRST.
PRESENTING AT WORLDS BY: FRANK FERRARI
The Fighting Pi strives to ensure leadership as one of its top priorities. It is one of the most helpful skills going forward in life. We strive to grow leaders for our community. To do this, we have derived a system that includes ten leadership roles and each has a single student that will carry it throughout the year. While these are not the only leadership options available, they are some of the most important and long lasting. These ten positions that are referred to are the eight captain and two supervisor roles.
As captains, students must lead their respective section including delegating and organizing tasks, keeping a timeline, and also effectively communicating to mentors, other captains, and the rest of the team about their section. The eight sections that have a captain are: Mechanical, Controls, Computer Aided Design (CAD), Strategy, Awards and Presentations, Sponsorship, Outreach, and Media. The first four sections listed ( Mechanical, Controls, CAD, and Strategy) are part of the build side of the team, and the latter 4 ( Awards and Presentations, Sponsorship, Outreach, and Media) are part of the business side. The two supervisor positions lead the four captains under their respective sections, one for business, and one for build. They make sure communication is flowing between captains, and both sides
of the team. They also help keep an overarching timeline to ensure that the team is on track.
The Fighting Pi decides its captains in a very effective way. At the end of the competition season, the team gathers and students nominate who they feel is well suited to run a specific position, the nominee then declines or accepts their offer. After gathering the nominees for all positions, mentor conducted interviews are run to ensure a captain, or supervisor, is fit for the task at hand, mostly ensuring that they understand the commitment and responsibility that it takes to be in one of these leadership positions. Then the captains names are placed on a ballot and the students vote at the beginning of the end of the season banquet, which usually occurs in early June just before summer events begin. The mentors do not have a vote in this process, it is all student selected. Senior members of the team do not have a vote either in order to keep leadership relevant to the current team?s values. The supervisor positions, however, are student nominated, but mentor selected. The mentors select the nominee they feel is best fit for the responsibility of supervisor. All positions are announced at the end of the banquet, and captains begin their jobs promptly. The Fighting Pi isn?t only busy during the competition season!
