The Miracle Workerz participated in the Mid-Atlantic Regional District Event at Hatboro-Horsham High School over the weekend of February 29, 2020. At the end of the qualifying matches, the team was ranked first seed and invited Peddie Robotics and Miss Daisy to be their alliance partners. Losing only one match during the elimination matches, MOEllennium Falcon finished strong as the alliance won the event.
In addition, the Miracle Workerz continued the tradition of handing out their own awards in the pits on the morning of Day 2. The Media team in conjunction with Joe Perrotto and Brian West designed unique medallions and a creative mechanical student created the display. The awards were presented to the winning teams along with a MOE cheer.
On Saturday February 22, 2020, the Miracle Workerz participated in an annual event, “Engineering Your Tomorrow” at Conrad School of Science in Wilmington, DE. The Miracle Workerz have participated in this event for close to 20 years and have enjoyed being a part of encouraging more young girls to go into STEM careers. This year, our safety mentor, Berlin Stokes was also an organizer for the event and her son, Randy, who is a MOE student volunteered for the event. The team brought CaMOElot so that the students could see first hand the work that our team does. The Miracle Workerz continue to provide outreach opportunities to spread the word of FIRST. GO MOE!
On Saturday, January 25th, the team had a great time participating in STEMtastic Weekends at the Hagley Museum! We had a demonstration featuring our robots, including CaMOElot. Visitors had the opportunity to get hands-on experience with the robots, see the robots in action, and draw their own robots. We also debuted our updated coloring books, which promote engineering to children in the form of fun activities.
The Red Clay School District Superintendent, Mr. Dorrell Green, took time out of his busy schedule to stop by and visit the team’s demonstration.
Thank you to Hagley Museum and to everyone who came by to see our demonstration.
Go MOE!
FIRST FRC has officially started their competition season! On Saturday of January 4th, MOE students and mentors arrived at Dupont’s building 700 at 10:00am to catch FIRST’s live feed. The game this year is Infinite Recharge.
But before the livestream of the game, students, mentors, and alumni viewed a moving tribute to 18-year-old Kendrick Ray Castillo who sacrificed his life to save his fellow students from a school shooter in Colorado. Kendrick loved robotics and was a member of FIRST FRC Team #4418, Impulse. Let us keep him and his family in our thoughts and prayers.
Then, Brandon Stewart gave a brief presentation on the expectations and instructions for Slack to the team. All parents, students, and mentors should be on Slack and check regularly and note their expected attendance. Slack is an essential tool for the team to communicate and share ideas.
Finally, the game launch started at approximately 10:31am and Infinite Recharge RISE went live. Programming mentor Lou Rossi was present in New Hampshire. This year, FIRST partnered with Disney and LucasFilm to bring us a Star Wars themed game all about energy. Star Wars actors John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Mark Hamil along with BB8 helped introduce how FIRST teams will provide energy to help FIRST City rise.
Afterwards, we were introduced to Larry Cullen, the new president of FIRST, who showcased a touching memorial to Woodie Flowers, a prominent face in the FIRST community who passed away in October. Woodie was known for coining “gracious professionalism” which is part of the ethos of FIRST and is something all FIRST teams try to emulate.
Next was the Kit of Parts which is part of the resources for teams and includes the Kickoff Kit (a box of parts delivered to teams at the start of the season), FIRST Choice (items available via an online menu in exchange for credits issued to all teams), and the Virtual Kit (products available directly from the supplier either via download or direct order).
At 10:53am, founder of FIRST, Dean Kamen came on the broadcast and hinted that asteroids were hurling at FIRST City, robots and students would be used to protect FIRST City by working together. The joint partnership came from Kamen believing in the link between science fiction , great imagination and inspiration. The energy theme came from Dean’s idea that people take advantage of energy and the access of energy determines everyone’s standard of living.
At last, at 11:13am, R2D2 appears to reveal the live playing field and the game animation. You can watch the game design video on FIRST’s YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmiYWTmFRVE
Then, the long awaited passcode to the game manual was released and MOE team members went to unlock it to find out more about the game. Students read and discussed the manual over lunch and called up Lou Rossi who was present at the actual field to ask questions. A big thanks to all the parents who graciously provided and served lunch for us!
Everyone then split into groups to discuss and study different elements of the game and then regrouped to present our findings.
Duel On The Delaware took place on October 19th, 2019. Here are the highlights from the event:
The Duel On The Delaware Snapchat filter was viewed over 1,500 times! We also had an all new competition team, and our team was the first pick of the #3 alliance.
Miss Delaware (Hillary May) was present, announced a match, and presented the book drive awards. We had a successful book drive, participation from 30 teams from five states, and 110+ volunteers! Additionally, we had five teams participate in the mock chairman’s award – a record amount! Congratulations to the Duel Master Volunteer Winner – Kevin McKay!
Last, but not least, one highlight from this event was the Woodie Flowers tribute. Rest In Peace, Woodie!
Thank you to everyone who helped make Duel on the Delaware a success!
MOE qualified to compete at the District Championship at Lehigh University! It was one of the higher stake competitions we’ve been in. There were many teams out there that we’re great partners and competitors, but the important part about it all to was having a great time with other great teams.It was an exciting time at Lehigh. Many ups and some downs throughout the competition but we didn’t do too bad considering that these were top teams from the FIRST Mid-Atlantic District! We also have our competition MOEwards! Congratulations to 6226 Blue Devils for earning unique design, 5895 Peddie School Robotics for earning Sandstorm Survivor, 3637 The Daleks for earning Best Pit, 41 RoboWarriors for earning the Spirit Award, 5407 Wolfpack robotics for earning the Out of the Box thinking Award, 747 Flight Crew for earning the Gracious Professionalism Award, 1712 DAWGMA for earning Best Mascot, and finally, 7587 Metcouhen Momentum for earning the Rookie Award! We are fortunate to give these out to deserving teams and hope that it’ll help them in their journey through FIRST.
David, MOE’s Dean’s List Finalist, will be competing for the Dean’s List Award at Detroit World Championship! We’re extremely proud of him; he has for sure earned it! As always, thank you to our amazing sponsors who support our student’s journey in the FIRST Community! We all appreciate all the help we get from anyone, sponsors, family members, mentors, alumni, and more! We cannot wait to represent our sponsors at Detroit and representing the Mid-Atlantic District as well!
MOE was able to compete in Seneca this past weekend on Saturday, March 23 and Sunday, March 24. We were much more prepared this time around thanks to our hardworking students! Our pit crew was outstanding when times got tough but our team in the stands kept cheering us on through it all. Our drivers and lead strategist did an amazing job on the field this weekend as well! Everyone on the team has done some self-improvement in one way or another that help out everyone on the team. We’re so proud of Alex and Michaela, our driver and function operator, who are always looking at what they can do on the field and getting out of hazardous situations. And a huge thanks to Tatiana, lead strategist, for always getting with alliance partners and talking up a storm full of strategy. As always, we have our MOEwards! Congrats to 1807 Redbird Robotics for earning the Sandstorm Survivor award, 2729 Storm Robotics, for earning Best Pit, 484 RoboForce for earning Best Spirit, 219 Team Impact for earning the Out of The Box Thinking award, and last but not least, 6327 Tin Soldiers for earning the Creative Design award. Congrats to you all! We also decided to bring back the Personal Recognition Buttons! We started this back in 2008 but decided to bring it back for its 8th year. 2 of our students receive 2 personal recognition buttons each for helping out 5490 on both Saturday and Sunday. We’d really love to see you with your Personal Recognition Button if you have them. Submit it to us through any of our Social media outlets! By the end of the day, we had 5 awards. 272 Cyber Crusaders gave us the award “Three in a MOE” due to our random trifecta. We also got the Unicorn award from 75 RoboRaiders for being the first team to get 4 ranking points (aka Unicorn). We also got a Personal Recognition Button from a team to the entire MOE team! They were all thankful for always helping them when they needed it. Thank you all for the awards.
We also won the Autonomous award thanks to our awesome program team with all their hard work and the Semi-Finalist Award thanks to our lead strategist and robot drivers.
We hope to see you at Lehigh next week, and good luck to anyone who still has competitions!
MOE attended Westtown on the weekend of March 9th and 10th (almost 2 weeks ago) and we had a BLAST (pun intended)! Our newest members got to experience what FRC is truly all about and we all had fun going to our first competition of the season! Destination: Deep Space gave SuperMOEva (our robot) a challenging time, but thanks to our awesome pit crew, it survived all those sandstorms and many other things.
As a MOE tradition of 19 years, we always have our MOEwards! this year, we had an award for the best pit, awarded to 5404 Gearaffes, best spirit, awarded to 4575 The Tin Mints, Unique design, awarded to 272 Cyber Crusaders, Out of the Box Thinking award, awarded to 3929 Atomic Dragons, and Sandstorm Survivor, awarded to 1811 FRESH! Congratulations!
We may have walked out empty handed but 4342 Demon Robotics awarded us the Gracious Professionalism award! Thank you so much! We are excited about our upcoming competition this weekend. Watch out Seneca, MOE’s coming to you!