On Saturday, February 20th, Coronado hosted the annual Colorado FRC Scrimmage. This event allows local First Robotics teams to come together and participate in a friendly competition. Teams from all over Colorado came to participate, bringing their 2016 Robot creations with them. The day started off with about 2 hours for teams to assemble, fix, and show off their bots. There were many interesting designs, and the event gave many opportunities for teams to share ideas and discuss other upcoming competitions.

“We got many complements, but the biggest one was when teams would come up and say, ‘How did you do this! We couldn’t have done this,’” said Bryce McLean, the head Mentor for team 2996.
Coronado’s robot performed exceedingly well. After the first round, the team was forced to replace the wheels having shattered both of the robot drive wheels. The team played another few rounds and again was forced to make repairs to the robots drive belt. Throughout all of these problems, the team stayed positive and were able to get the robot back on the field and back in the game.

A good FRC team has many attributes that contribute to its success. There can be an amazingly built robot, but if no one knows how to drive it, the team will still fail. A team must be interconnected and supported in order to excel. At competition, everybody has a job that helps the team succeed. The team gets split into smaller teams. The Drive team is in charge of driving and manipulating the bot and field obstacles. Scout Team keeps an eye on other teams and robots and how they are doing in comparison. The Spirit Team provides support for the team and spreads word of Team 2996 throughout the FIRST community.

Overall, FRC provides many opportunities for students to grow in fields relating to STEM, business, and peer to peer interaction. Wish the Cougars Gone Wired team luck as they head to Flagstaff, Arizona on March 9th to compete in the Arizona Regional.