Drama

What a very dramatic day yesterday was, almost from start to finish.

The directions to the competition site took us on several back (i.e. country) roads. That's usually not a problem, and in fact it usually means less traffic and faster travel times. Except...it snowed this week...and the wind was blowing a lot yesterday morning...so most areas of the roads were fine, some stretches were completely dry...and a few were 3 inches deep in blown snow and slippery as hell.

Still, we arrived before the teachers, and most of the rest of the students from NWMS (Sparky's school). Everyone from our district was set up in one of the gyms; we had seven of the 16 teams competing--I just realized this....how odd that our little town sent over 45 kids to this!

The setup for this is that each team has four attempts to run their pre-programmed robot on "the board" (which is actually a sort of obstacle course). There are several tasks on the board; each one worth points if it is accomplished. Teams can also lose points if they do certain things incorrectly. The boards are about 6 x 12 feet.

Although this is the showy part, and certainly what the kids think is the all-important part, each team is also scored on two presentations they must do: Teamwork and Research. Each team picks a topic relating to the theme (this year is an ocean theme; last year it was disability) and researches it. Sparky's team--the Gulper Eels--did something about the USS Arizona, although I'm not exactly sure what. However, their team coach (Mr. Z) said they absolutely rocketed through the Research presentation, clicking on all cylinders. The judge asked only a couple of minor questions, for which they had substantial answers.

The Teamwork presentation sort of explains how they came up with the concept for their robot, why it does what it does, the theory behind it. Mr. Z was less excited about this one: only 2 of the kids spoke for the first 10 minutes, until finally Sparky jumped in to clarify something, and then one of the other kids was brave enough to make some comments. Since it's supposed to show them working as a team, Mr. Z wasn't sure how that went over.

The four board runs were incredibly frustrating for the Eels, however. After the first run, the Reset woman picked up their robot--and it broke into pieces. They had to take it back to their 'pit' and reconstruct it, hoping that the program would still work with the rebuild. [They are actually allowed to have two robots, so I never did figure out why they didn't use the other one...] The second run went a little better: they actually scored some points. But the third run went poorly, even though the actual builders were running the robot that time. Sparky was chosen to do the last run of the day with one of the other nonbuilders. He had a little meltdown beforehand since neither of the builders would actually give him the robots to practice with. He was, understandably but very dramatically, upset.

Beast and I went to stand near the board to watch him run the robot (most of the rest of the time I stayed in the bleachers), which turned out to be a good thing since the run absolutely sucked. They got almost no points, and one of the builders kept shouting unhelpful comments to them like "Line it up straight!" and "Program 5! Program 5! Program 5!" (to which Sparky finally said, "We're running program 5!") This kid is a complete twit, so it wasn't surprising.

At the end of the run, the boys left the competition area, and the next thing I know is Sparky is leaning on Beast obviously crying, and one of the other Eel moms is looking at him and she's almost crying. The Non-Obnoxious Builder said to Sparky that it wasn't his fault, NOB had forgotten to take a piece off the robot, etc.... Finally, I shouldered up to Sparky and said, "Do you need to go to the bathroom?" and he took off like a bat outta hell for the other side of the gym, away from the pit and the rest of the Eels.

Eventually--after a talk with Dad--he settled down and helped straighten up the pit area and repacked stuff to take home. The team was in full "well, we learned some stuff, and next year we'll do this and this and this differently, and oh, well" mode. The scoring from the 4 competitions had them solidly in distance 16th place...total bottom-feeders, which I think is what Eels are, yeah? Their best score on the boards was under 50; the highest score was about 170. The Research and Teamwork scores aren't posted.

So all the teams lined up for the awards ceremony. Each kid got a participation medal and the Eels resettled on the floor, prepared to be good sports about one of the other teams from the district moving forward to the state level (surely, out of 7 teams, one would make top 6, right??).

There were awards for Teamwork, Robotics (running the boards), Research, Best Overall, and (basically) 5 runners-up overall. I was kind of hoping that Mr. Z was right and they'd blown the judge out of the water (heh) on the Research component. One of the hosting teams won the Teamwork award. The Robotics award went to a team from A.H. (the team that traveled the furthest distance, ironically), and the Research award went to...the Gulper Eels! Woot! They were so shocked they didn't even stand up for a full 10 seconds.

So then the top six teams were announced...and the Eels squeaked in as one of the state competitors! Turns out each component is worth about 400 points. They scored a 393 on the Research component and the 350 on the Teamwork. Since no team scored over 180 on Robotics, their non-Robotics scores carried them into the top 6. Presumably, this means that other kids did less well on the other two components, the bits that the Eels rocked.

Holy cow! One other team from our district is going too (from the other middle school), so it will be good to know some people there, wherever and whenever "there" is.

So we're all looking at the score sheets and people are leaving and the Eels and their parents are saying we can't believe it, when Mr. Z turns to, Johnny, his younger son, who has been crying and we couldn't hear him for the excitement, and we see Johnny pull his hand away from his head. His hand is covered with blood, totally red. Total silence for about one second, then Mr. Z says, "Well, then, bathroom" and picks up Johnny and takes off, his wife at his heels. NOB packs up the trophy; Twit goes and gets their teacher who then has the announcer do the "doctor in the building" announcement. Twit and his brother go with Johnny's brother to find Johnny. I look around for the EMT who had been sitting next to me in the bleachers--he's gone. Twit's mom asks where her kids are.

Sparky and I (Beast had left after Sparky's run on the board--no bleachers for him!) went to find Twit. We find him and his brother in the hall by the nurse's office (oddly, the nurse was there, but didn't have her office keys). Twit's brother is green--not a good person to be looking at a scalp would (which has continued to bleed). We find Twit's mom, and then since we clearly can't help, we take off, driving through another snowstorm across the prairies, Sparky reiterating how "stunned", "amazed" and "surprised" he is the whole way home.

I called his folks later: Johnny had to go to the hospital and get two staples in his head (that sounds awful!), Twit's brother threw up in the hall soon after we left, and again at Wal-Mart on the way home when he started thinking about it again, but otherwise Johnny is fine. He was under the bleachers retrieving a book he'd dropped and when he came out his head collided with a metal corner.

The Cat. family, on the other hand, had home-grilled burgers, watched last Thursday's Survivor and CSI, and went to bed.