Our final record at IRI was 1-8, and although we didn’t win many matches, have never been more proud of a group of my friends in my entire life. Since I joined bacon last year I have been to 4 regionals and championships, we have faced a lot of challenges at each and every one, but I don’t think I have ever seen challenges as elusive and frustrating as many that we faced this weekend. Although we didn’t always know how we were going to make it through we never stopped making it. Without any mechanical electrical, or programming mentors (although with some little help from some IRI volunteers and other teams) we managed to solve almost everything that was thrown at us. Friday as the day went on it seemed like each match was something else that was going on, there were hands in the robot fixing things like a bee hive in spring every second, including at one point carrying the Ethernet cable into the arena while we were queuing to try and test right before a match. At one point everything had seemed to have come to a low, we were 1-4, we had no idea how to fix several problems we were having and spirits had begun to bottom out. Luckily, super Wendy came to the rescue and got everyone to work in minutes. Within hours we were almost back to full bacon goodness power and played one of the greatest games I have ever witnessed. Despite losing 53-52, energy had reached a record high. Between Kris and our alliance partners flawless driving, perfect execution of strategy, and a couple human player shots landed from John michael, we had managed to come within a point of taking down a highly favored alliance, including the esteemed 111 and rookie einstein team 4334. After an incredible final match we worked to get the robot up to par with what it is capable of. Throughout the day we had experienced issues with batteries, manipulator control board malfunctions, burnt out motors, jamming balls, and more. By the time we left the arena, we had successfully run the robot under the controls of just about everyone there and scored numerous baskets, didn’t jam a single ball, and never experienced voltage drops slowing down the robot. Wether or not we are dominating the competition, this has been beyond a doubt the most valuable event that I have ever gone too for robotics and I know that pretty much everyone here feels the same way. We have had to learn and apply more concepts and knowledge than I would have to say I personally have learned at every other event combined. Even though we didn’t win IRI on saturday, or even get into eliminations, we as people have won more than any cool basketball trophy.