Bayou Regional 2018

Bayou Regional. Kenner, Louisiana. An eight-hour bus ride with 31 people. As you can see, we had our hands full. Breakaway has been attending the Bayou Regional for 6 years now. Team 3937 Breakaway has won the event in 2014, 2015, 2017. This year, however, we faced a tough alliance in the semifinals against 2992 S.S. Prometheus (Mandeville, LA), 364 Fusion (Gulfport, MS), 281 Green Villains (Greenville, SC). Although we didn’t bring home a blue banner, we did win the Excellence in Engineering award, which is the highest award given for robot design.

Our team left early Wednesday morning and drove all the way to Kenner, arriving at around 4:30pm. Quite a long time on a bus! Some of us went to the venue to set up the pit, the rest stayed at the hotel. On Thursday, practice matches started. We enjoyed watching the robots while things were still easy going.

On Friday, the competition began. We finished Friday’s qualification round in the 8th seed. We also had all of our presentations that day. Chairman’s went very well, the judges even laughed at Dylin’s corny jokes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t our year for Chairman’s, but there’s always next year! The rest of the presentations went very well also, thanks to our wonderful pit speaker Anna.

On Saturday, it was crazy! I finished scouting the robots early, and a wonderful Breakaway mom had brought us all beignets! We are so thankful for our team parents and mentors who encourage and support our team! Since this was the last day for Bayou, Aubrey and I started loading some of our pit into the bus. When we came back, Anna asked me to be the pit speaker for the next hour, which I really loved. I talked to so many different teams, including one from Mexico.

We also really enjoyed competing with our alliance, Team 2333 S.C.R.E.E.C.H. (from Sapulpa, OK) and Team 5045 SpartaBots (Memphis, TN) . They were a great alliance. Unfortunately, we came up short. It was a good run.

Bayou Regional 2018 is in the books, and one to remember. I’m so glad I got to have this experience with all of my friends. The experience I gained from this regional is some that I’m sure all of us will carry with us forever. Until next year!

We love our sponsors!