Pearadox at TRI 2019

This Friday and Saturday (6/28/2019, 6/29/2019), Pearadox, FRC team 5414 participated in TRI, the Texas Robotics Invitational hosted by Spectrum, FRC team 3847, at Strake Jesuit. The Texas Robotics Invitational is a great offseason event that serves as both an introduction to FRC for the incoming rookies and a way for current team members to branch out.

The first part of the event consisted of the All-Girl Drive Team Tournament. This gave our Chairman’s team’s girls a chance to experience a world they normally would not be able to participate in due to their usual stations at the pits presenting to judges. Here, the girls formed a Drive Team by taking on the roles of Driver, Operator, Human Player, and Technician for four fast-paced, but fulfilling matches, despite their lack of experience with participating in matches. In fact, Pearadox often uses offseason matches as a chance to get more non-Drive Team members to experience being on the Drive Team or as a way to immerse new rookies in the matches by offering them a more direct perspective using the role of Technician.

After lunch, qualification matches—matches held to determine the robots’ ranks based on the total ranking points accumulated by completing certain tasks in each math—were held, put on hold at around 6:30, before continuing Saturday. During these matches, many members of Pearadox got to switch through the roles of Operator, Human Player, Technician, and Drive Coach. These rotations gave students a good idea of the duties they would undertake if they choose to aim for a certain role on Drive Team the next year.

Simultaneously, two Pearadox students stepped up to create scouting schedules and lead the team, especially the incoming rookies, who would be expected to be active scouters in the upcoming year, in watching and recording each team’s performance using apps designed by Pearadox on kindles. This data was crucial for Alliance Selections, which took place just before lunch on Saturday. Although Pearadox was not an Alliance Captain during Alliance Selections, the consolidated from scouting proved to be useful when our representative, prospected Strategy Lead for next year, advised our teammates on the remaining selections.

Competitions are quite fun in their own right, but at TRI, we were graced with an extra celebration party on Friday evening for the students of different teams to mingle, socialize, and have fun. Spectrum provided a variety of food, from Cici’s Pizza to Cane’s chicken and a variety of entertainment, including but not limited to dodgeball, Super Smash Bros, Miniature Texas Cornhole, and Jenga. Our team members enjoyed themselves greatly and forged new connections with various members of other teams.
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Overall, TRI was very rewarding, as we were not only able to expose our rookies to the various exciting aspects of FRC, but were also able to see unexpected leadership skills and technical abilities of certain members shine when put under the foreign pressure of being on Drive Team or having to lead in scouting. As always, Pearadox continues to grow and evolve with each competition, with each of our members constantly striving for an improved pearformance.

Pearadox, the Pearland ISD robotics team, benefited a great deal from participating in the 2019 Texas Robotics Invitational hosted by Spectrum, in which we successfully competed in Playoffs and ranked 24 out of the 36 participating teams.