Team 303 Newsletter 1

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And the season begins! 2014 Game: Aerial Assist

On January 4th, Team 303 traveled to Montgomery High School along with many other teams from the surrounding area to listen to the announcement of the 2014 FRC game. The team was not sure what to expect after the Game Design Committee threw a curveball last year with the decreased robot size and climbing aspect of the game. Once again, we all got a very surprising game. “Aerial Assist” places emphasis on cooperative

scoring and high-level in-game strategy, in addition to, overall robot design and performance. The objec-tive is to score as many balls in goals as possible during a 2 minute and 30 second match. The more Alliances score their ball in their goals, and the more they work together to do it, the more points their alliance receives.The team wasted no time getting down to business, even after a delay due to inclement weather, and by

Tuesday, 1/7, was ready to start prototyping several potential game mecha-nisms at their workshop graciously provided by their sponsor, STS Tire & Auto! The team will be building both a competi-tion robot and a practice robot this year. Expect up-dates on both in the com-ing weeks, then come see their competition robot play “Aerial Assist” at the Bridgewater-Raritan MAR District event on March 29th and 30th!

Issue 1Jan. 2014

s p o n s o rn e w s l e t t e r

FRC Team 303:The TEST Team

Bridgewater-Raritan High School

©2014 FRC Team 303: The TEST Team

In this Issue:1. FRC Competition Season - 2014!2. FRC Pre-Season2. FTC Cookie Carnage!2. FLL State Qualifyer3. Brunswick Eruption!3. Girl Power3. Freshman Arrive4. Community Outreach

FTC Cookie Carnage!On December 6th, Team 303’s two FIRST Tech Challenge Teams, FTC Team’s 756 and 757, descended upon their first meet of the FTC season. Their season had been in-terrupted numerous times by the FRC team’s intense pre-season but that didn’t stop the crew! Their robot performance could have been better but they were

recognized for their out-reach to the community with the Connect Award. Both teams have two more

events to attend and only the best of the two will be counted towards their state ranking. So there’s still a very real chance we may see a Bridgewater FTC team at the State Champi-onships for the second year in a row.

FLL State Qualifyer!

During the final week of November, the team got

together to throw one final event for the community. They hosted 22 FLL teams at the Bridgewater-Rar-itan Middle School for a FIRST LEGO League State Qualifying event. They worked until they were forced out the night before to make sure the event was set-up perfectly. The event ran smoothly and everyone had a fantastic time. Team 303 members

ran and oversaw every part of the event from refer-eeing, building the fields and bringing the teams to judging. In the end, it was a huge improvement from the qualifier they host-ed last year at Milltown Elementary School, with a much more relaxed and fun atmosphere.

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FRC Pre-SeasonStarting in November, Team 303 was back in action wanting to do ev-erything possible to repeat and exceed their past years’ successes. The team took a detailed look at their drive base from “Ultimate Ascent” and thought of ways to improve it. After that analysis, Team 303 got together on the build side and used the new design

to train new members and veterans alike. The design was completed in about a month, meeting two days a week. It was quickly clear that it was a significant im-provement from last year’s design as it was able to take the abuse of driver’s testing for two days and never missed a beat! After the design was completed, the Build Leadership got together and discussed

even further improvements to be made for when they start their robot fabrica-tion for the 2014 competi-tion season.

The completed practice drive base

The teams’ Connect Award certificate!

Getting ready for the arrival of the 22 teams!


Upcoming Events:2/15/14

MAR Pre-bag Scrimmage

2/28/14 - 3/2/14MAR Week 1:

Hatboro -Horsham

3/2/14NJ FTC State

Championship

3/28/14 - 3/30/14MAR Week 5:

Bridgewater-Raritan

4/5/14Middle School Technical

Design Challenge

Brunswick Eruption!

Brunswick Eruption was Team 303’s last post-season event

and final performance for their “Ultimate Ascent” robot. The robot did show some signs of wear, which is understandable, seeing as it had competed in ex-cess of 100 matches up to that point. That didn’t stop the team from giving an amazing perfor-mance, making it to eliminations with Team 25, the host, and their sister team, Team 103. In addition to the successful robot performance, Team 303 was awarded the Gracious Profes-

sionalism Award for the help they gave other teams through-out the season and their overall positive spirit on and off the field.

Girl Power!Early in October, Team 303 competed in their first post-sea-son event of the school year… and this event had a twist! Only female team members were allowed to be members of the drive team. The final team was composed of Dominique Dahl (driver), Cat Librio (co-pilot), Alessandra Sanchez (coach) and Brianna Leary (human-player). This posed an interesting chal-lenge for many teams. Luckily, Team 303 was prepared since more than half of their drive

team was female during their stint at the world championship where they won their division as alliance captains and went on to become World Semi-Finalists. This put them in a fantastic posi-

tion. The TEST Team ended the competition undefeated in qual-ification matches and went on to become a finalist as captain of the number one alliance. That’s not all though. The judges at the event awarded Team 303 the Judges Award for capturing the spirit of girl power.

Freshman Arival!Team 303 wanted to get a jumpstart on their 2014 season. Before school had even been in session for three weeks, Team 303 held their first interest meeting in the large cafeteria at the high school. Two months later, every new team mem-ber had gained experience in the world of robotics through either participation the FIRST

Tech Challenge or working on a prototype FIRST Robotics Competition drive-base. The TEST Team finally closed their doors to new members at their final team meeting of the 2013 post-season. They made sever-al key announcements, such as, their 2014 event schedule and updates on team leadership.

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Drive team talking with a close friend of the team from Franklin’s 613

The drive team was sporting the prop-er attire for the event

The sea of freshman at the first meet-ing


Community OutreachOver the summer, TEST Team 303 was showing off their 2012 “Rebound Rumble” robot to everyone who attended the Somerset County 4-H Fair. They shot soft foam basketballs into the audience and helped get people of all ages interested in robotics and engineering. On top of that, Team 303 ran multi-ple programming workshops at the 4-H center for anyone inter-ested in learning how to pro-

gram an NXT robot. After both those great outreach events, Team 303 also led programming workshops at the Jewish Com-munity Center in Bridgewater to help kids interested in getting a head start in programming and engineering!

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Team 303 teaching both kids and adults all about LEGO NXT Program-

ming


thank you for your continued support!

Documents

Team 303 Newsletter 1