Considerations & Failures

Failure has shaped our team more than success, and we have had much of the former. We have faced various obstacles last year from issues with our hardware design not working the way we planned to dealing with inefficient parts. We are do not have a large budget in which we can allocate our resources to our liking, and of the 716 students enrolled at our high school, over half of them are economically eligible for free or reduced lunches. 82 percent of our students are minorities, yet we don’t let these facts tell our story. Our high school was ranked first in New Jersey in 2018 and forty-ninth in the nation (according to U.S News). Inspired by our high school, our robotics team doesn’t let our weaknesses dictate how we perform, but instead, we make them our strengths. We have taken advantage of the fact that we need financial assistance by fostering a relationship with our local community. This is vital as we know that despite our financial limitations, especially with the ones we will foresee later on with Covid-19, we plan to persevere and test our limits to get a final product we are proud of!

On November 12th, 2017 we faced a crushing defeat at competition in Bayonne. That day was a velocity vortex of failures. It started off with us leaving our safety goggles at our school–rookie mistake. Without safety goggles, many of our members were unable to enter the pits and had to stay back on the bleachers. On top of that, while practicing before a match, the output shaft of our servo had snapped off. We had forgotten to implement an external power off switch which nearly disqualified us. Our robot couldn’t even drive correctly due to software issues. Teams whose robot did not move had scored more points than ours. An onslaught of flaws and mistakes had overtook our team that year, and we had learned to prioritize the acknowledgement of the different components of our robot while adhering to basic rules, such as NEVER forgetting our safety goggles.

Last year, during the Skystone season, our greatest difficulties and failures lied in the hardware aspect of our team. With our robot, on top of being unable to perform the tasks we expected it to, our hardware team had to deal with finding new parts that FTC had required that year. Financial issues were a burden once again, and limited us in our time to prepare for upcoming competitions while we waited weeks to get basic supplies, such as the expansion hub. However, last year, our team was more considerate in being attentive to bringing in safety goggles and the necessary supplies we needed in order to compete. Our organization was more honed, and as a result, we were able to flow more smoothly as a team, which helped in addressing our setbacks of failures and experimenting with the robot. Although we could have done better, we as a team, had definitely improved in our skills and made a difference in the STEM and FIRST community!

These concoction of mistakes from the past and present were the best things to happen to us as a team. It allowed us to humble ourselves and step back and truly analyze the mistakes our team made. There was blame to be placed on everyone's shoulders that day and while many would have felt weakened by such a day, our resolve was only strengthened. From those rough days and onward, we have taken steps to prevent such mistakes from happening again. We improved communication between the various branches of our team. We took our weaknesses and have made them our strengths. Of course, as we have every year, we try hard to keep our wires connected! No matter the difficulty we encounter and the failure we may have to address, we know that we need to keep our minds in synch with one another and work as a team – we are Clutch Squad, and we know that given our failures, success, and considerations in the past, that will only make us stronger in giving alleyway to better paths for what lied ahead.