Coyote Robotics Brings Home Three Trophies

The GW Community School/Coyote Robotics Teams competed this past Saturday, May 21, 2011, in the 2^nd Annual RoboRally at Osbourn Park High School in Manassas.  GWCS contributed three robots to the field of 22, and encountered a variety of challenges during the qualifying rounds, ranging from burned-out motors (with no working spares!) to broken track links (with all the spares left at school!).  Despite finishing ranked 9^th, 16^th, and 20^th after qualifying, we finished with strong performances and effective robots.  J.P. Fisch and Matt Apostolico lobbied the four alliance captains and convinced the 4^th-ranking alliance captain to select them as their partner for the elimination rounds.  That proved to be a wise choice, as our robot consistently outscored all the other robots combined and our alliance beat the 1^st-ranked alliance two games straight in the semi-finals and then the 3^rd-ranked alliance two games straight in the finals to emerge Co-Champions!  In addition, they held a Driver Skills contest to see who could score the most points in one minute, and we took 1^stand 2^nd in that contest, with Matt Apostolico scoring 26 points and Matthew Gaughan scoring 38 points!   Another Robotics Events, three more trophies!

Congratulations to Matt Apostolico, J.P. Fisch, Josh Barton, Matthew Firsching, Ian Doten, Max Doyle and Matthew Gaughan for their successes in this competition, and to Sam McKay, Eric Kramer, Brian Burggraf, and Anne Marie McDonald who also worked on the robots but could not attend the event.   Thanks also to our Assistant Coach Dana Doten, and to the parents who helped drive us and cheer us on!  Go Coyotes!

Gary T. Lindner, GW Community School/Coyote Robotics Team Coach