FLL NJ Qualifying Tournament in Montclair

Built On The Rock competed in the Montclair NJ qualifying tournament yesterday, and what an exciting event it was! Only 13 teams competed, but four perfect scores (3 of which were official) were achieved there! Built On The Rock got two perfect scores and a 390, and a team called the Robo Invaders got the other two perfect scores (one as a fill-in). Other teams achieved fairly high scores also, which was surprising, since I thought this year's challenge would be harder for teams. I also noticed that none of the teams used the RIS system, which was also slightly surprising since there's a nice fairness bonus for using the RIS. The picture shows the puzzle from the mat, which the Robo Invaders put together and displayed at their pit. Great job!

Built On The Rock won the Robot Performance award, and congratulations to the Robo Invaders (Champion's Award), Landroids (Robot Design), Gears (Teamwork), and Torn (Research Project), who will also be competing at NJ State on December 8th. We heard that the NJ Champion's award winner will be going to the World Festival in April (not all states are going), so it's going to be an exciting tournament!

Here are some pictures of the event:

Built On The Rock with the Robot Performance award. A couple of the old members and I aren't on the team this year, since we're older than 14.

The awards were shaped like puzzle pieces, with the Champion's award being a combination of the four others. The competition tables.

Team Gears had this wooden model of a robot displayed on their table... notice it doesn't have any gears. :-)

The Landroids, a first-year team, doing a practice run... they were getting perfect scores in some of their practice runs, but unfortunately didn't get them on the official rounds.

Built On The Rock in their Teamwork interview.

You can also read about the event on our website: http://www.TeamBuiltOnTheRock.org

-Jonathan