Last Saturday, 2/18, the Coronado robotics team, Cougars Gone Wired, played host for the ninth year to the Colorado Regional Scrimmage event. The scrimmage was held in the Coronado gym with 20 teams coming from across the state to participate. The event was an overall success and provided a fantastic opportunity for teams to test their 2017 creations.

The day started off with team check-in and testing, where the playing field was open for teams to do system checks and prepare for later practice matches. Later, teams played in mock games with many teams performing exceptionally well, showing off their innovative ways to shoot whiffle balls, place gears, and climb a rope. Coronado participated in several practice matches. The first match ended with a broken wheel and a broken code, causing the team to work throughout the day to get the robot repaired and back on the field. Later in the day, the team played several more practice matches, working on testing systems on the robot. The matches provided valuable information on several fixes and modifications that need to be made. Part of scrimmage as an event is working out issues with the bots so that they can be fixed before the actual competition.

While part of the team was running field maintenance, other sub-teams were working on both the practice and the competition robot. The competition robot must be completed by 2/21 in order to be eligible for regional competitions. At the end of build season, the competition robot is sealed in a bag and cannot be touched again until it is unsealed at the Salt Lake City Regional.
From now until the team heads to its first competition, they will continue to meet and work on their practice bot as well as training their drive team for this year. While the official competition isn’t until 3/8, the scrimmage proved that this year promises to be exciting, with teams pulling out all the stops in their creativity. Cougars Gone Wired is no exception and will continue to work and-and make improvements in the weeks remaining before Regionals.