Today was a very exciting day! Each team has only 6 qualifying matches to get a chance to be in the quarter finals.
We won all five of our matches today, and we have one more tomorrow. Even more exciting is that Free Range Robotics the Home school team, are coming first on the placing board! This is out of a draw of 140 teams. The other 140 teams that are here in Dallas are playing off each other in a parallel tournament to ours, and the champion team of each division gets to play in the Grand Final. It looks like we have a good chance at the title!
Match one score was, 36 to 30, we had NO alliance partner, as they did not show up at all! So we played against 2 opposing robots on our own. And won!
Match two, 46 to 19, we also had no alliance partner again (their robot was disqualified for being over size just as we set up on the field) but we managed to win convincingly.
Match three 37 to 24.
Match four, 40 to 36.
Match five, 44 to 21
We have our last qualifying match tomorrow which will be followed by the finals in the afternoon.

We also did the Drivers Challenge Qualifier today, we scored well and are placed second out of all 270 teams.
We did the Programming Skills challenge qualifier as well, and we are coming second out of all 270 teams!
Being in the top ten of these two categories mean you play off again (in the skills and in the programming) world championship match tomorrow.

We were well supported during the matches by our fellow New Zealand Team's, with lots of cheering, and enthusiasm from the Kiwi's in the audience.
Lots of the other teams that are here are congratulating us on our performance so far.

If we (and we should) get into the quarter finals we play best of 3, then semi finals best of 3 and finals best of 3. Then the Grand Championship: best of 3. With our 6th qualifying match to begin with, plus the skills and programming finals it could be a grueling day. We hope so!

Thanks again for all your support!

Rhiannon.