Northern Bites Blog

On Saturday, we brought our field to Morrel Lounge in Smith Union for a midday scrimmage for the parents. Chown talked (unfortunately, without a mic) about our success as a team, and introduced the members of the team. A crowd of 150-200 then watched our team from Atlanta decimate our team from Hannover 12-1 in two full halves. Though some small children wearing orange-colored pastels provided an unexpected hiccup for our vision calibration, the remainder of the scrimmage went well.
The Atlanta team started in blue, defending against Hannover, who had a scoreless first half. During half-time, one of the spectators suggested we switch the goalie code for each team to give Hannover a better chance. Though the Hannover’s new all-star goalie couldn’t communicate with his teammates, he made some clutch saves in the second half, holding Atlanta to a 12-1 final lead over Hannover.

Both during half-time, and after the game, the crowd was very enthusiastic, and asked many questions. One father even came up to me later in the day, and wondered what his interested teenage son should do in high school to be able to do something like RoboCup in College. On the whole, the parents were immensely entertained, and for the many students who attended, it was an experience to finally see their own robot-dog team in action.
For us, it was a chance to get better at preparing for competition, including a chance for some to learn more about color-calibration. Though the match was a success from an event point of view, it certainly showed us that we have a lot of work to do in the next year to ensure that the Northern Bites remain unbeatable. Look for pictures and a video to be posted soon.

We just finished our one-half-only scrimmage in Lancaster for the trustees. Our current team (in blue) beat our old team from hannover (in red) 7-0 in 9 minutes of play. Though our vision calibration probably favored the atlanta team, and shooting on the yellow goal, the game was engaging to watch. The atlanta team moved the ball well (as is to be expected), and converted on every attack. The Trustees were all very interested, and asked lots of questions which was good. Some of them even asked questions beyond the usual, getting at important issues like why we did so well in atlanta, and how we manage to be so cool (jk). Before the scrimmage began, Professor Chown introduced all the team members, and talked a bit about our team philosophy, and our journey over the past several years.
Looking ahead two weeks to our big Parents Weekend scrimmage on the 27th, we seem to be pretty set. Obviously we will want to have a slightly better tuned color table, but overall, seems like we have reduced the huge ordeal of having a scrimmage to only a couple of hours of prep time (last night, we were out of the venue in only 4 hours, including flield and light setup and calibration).