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January 8th: Kickoff

Time for Season

Welcome back! The season has started. Everyone has been so excited for this 2022 season and our team has been anticipating this game for quite a while. As we wrapped up off-season training over the past few weeks, our team closed out 2021 with 2 off-season competition wins, and a 7th place in the recent 11th F4 Cad-a-thon. Closing up the off-season, today was a special moment for our team - finally getting to have a season in over a year!

The Winter Cad-a-thon took us to new heights. Great job to our designers for accomplishing such a feat. It was not an easy task, having to model the full robot in the course of a week! Nonetheless, placing 7th out of the 45 teams that competed has been our best record yet. Our team number was 566, instead of our FRC 2658, and the name was Σ-motion's Uprising. It was good practice and overall a fun competition to take part in. Meanwhile, all of our other subteams have been busy finishing up their curriculums and learning the most they can to be ready for this season.



Due to Covid-19 reaching an all-time high these past couple of weeks during the winter holidays, our team has also been ensuring the safe participation of our members. By enforcing masks to be worn at all times, we have also done our best to social distance and stay sanitized. It was amazing to see how quickly everyone was able to adapt to this unprecedented situation and it's truly an honor to be working alongside them.

Moving into the future, our marketing gifted us with new merchandise! Other new designs are still to come as season shirts will soon be made. They have a lot of work ahead of them as they continue to work on Dean's List essays, Woodie Flower's essay, and the Chairman's award. Overall, we appreciate the effort they put in and we all look forward to new things they might have in the future!

Today, kickoff, was a great day and experience for everyone. For many, this was their first official kickoff and was a very exciting moment. As soon as the game manual was released, our build team got straight to work. Their off-season training has really paid off as they worked hard to get the practice field complete. With fine machinery skills, it was yet another great experience for those that showed up. Starting from 10am, the build team has worked a long day and will continue tomorrow!










Each year, we like to take time to analyze the game manual. Before anything else, understanding the whole concept of the game is valued much by our team. Breaking up the manual into different sections, our team divided and conquered with 6 different teams - each covering 1 or 2 sections of the 2022 game manual. Putting them into a Google Slide presentation, each group presented after a couple hours of synthesizing, analyzing, and clarifying big and small details of the game. With a good understanding comes good execution. After our teams presented, a priority list was formed. That is still under extensive discussion and critical thinking, but essentially, all of our thoughts are documented to finalize our strategy and possible gameplay options. This year, we have big dreams to reach Worlds. With dedication and perseverance, our team, Σ-motion #2658, will do the best we can and make the greatest robot our team has yet to see.


                                 

Stay tuned for more! The blog is up and running once again. This is only the beginning.
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