FIRST Robotics Competition Blog

That about sums it up!

Congratulations to MARS, FIRST Robotics Competition Team 2614, from Morgantown, West Virginia, USA, our St Louis Chairman’s Award Winner! You are so deserving of this honor! Welcome to the Hall of Fame!

Also, congratulations to our St Louis Winning Alliance! What fantastic final matches*:

• Team 2767, Stryke Force, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
• Team 254, The Cheesy Poofs, from San Jose, California, USA
• Team 862, Lightning Robotics, from Canton, Michigan, USA
• Team 1676, The Pascack PI-oneers, from Montvale, New Jersey, USA

We can’t wait to welcome the Chairman’s Award Winners and the Einstein-Winning Alliances from both Houston and St Louis to our Festival of Champions, here in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA, July 28 and 29. More info on this event here. The competition portion of the event will be free and open to the public, and we will have plenty of seating, so if you are in the area (or want to be!) please come join us. We’ll also be webcasting! It’s going to be a great way for us to officially close out the FIRST STEAMWORKS season.

Oh – and just a few numbers. At the 2016 FIRST Championship we had about 43,000 badged visitors. While the final numbers aren’t in yet, for 2017, between the two locations, we had over 60,000. Given the increase in our team counts, this is not unexpected, but that’s 17,000 more real (not theoretical) people that got to experience Championship this year, and I would bet a significant number of that 60,000 total were joining us for the first time.

And one more note. We had over 100 volunteers who supported both the Houston and St Louis Championships. To these folks, and to all our volunteers, ‘thanks’ is not enough, but I’m going to say it anyway. Thanks!

I hope everyone who joined us in St Louis has had a chance to get in a serious nap over the last few days. You know what I’m talking about – the kind of nap where you wake up with drool on the pillow and for a few seconds can’t remember where you are, who you are, or what your mama looks like. I know I have!

Frank

*I’d say I was on the edge of my seat, but there was no way I was sitting down for those! A 3 point margin of victory in that last match? So exciting!