What a fun day!! This was a girls only competition which we were really happy to be a part of. 
We had a male driver this year (he's up above photobombing the girls' pic) so two all girl drive teams were formed for this event.  They did great, finishing 7th after all qualifying matches! 
Moved onto the finals in an alliance with teams 2337, 3538 and 5084. Went as far as the semi finals until we were eliminated by another alliance. 
For first time drivers, these girls did fantastic and as a team we couldn't be more proud of them!

Such a fun event and we'll be looking forward to hopefully participating in it again next year! 

It was a beautiful fall day for the event!  We had runners & walkers from all over. Some local and some driving quite a distance to participate. We enjoyed meeting each of you! 
Also nice to see members from fellow FRC teams - Team 6086 Ignition and Team 2137 TORC coming out to support us! 
It takes a lot to run a FIRST robotics team and we couldn't do it without the generous support from others! So we appreciate each of you who took time out of your Saturday to be a part of our event! 
We look forward to seeing everyone again next year! 

Photo Gallery of the event uploaded to Flickr - Click HERE to see the album.  (more pics added as we get them) 

Race Results have been uploaded to the Race Entry website - Click HERE 

A few pics from race day! Full gallery at link above on Flickr. 

We have a Robot Demo planned for October 22nd at Past Tense in Lapeer during their fall festival.  We will be on stage at 4:30pm that Saturday to talk about what we do, show our 2016 robot and let the public interact with it as well.  The VEX IQ teams will be there also to show their robots. 
So come on out to see us and enjoy Past Tense while there! Info for their festival click HERE. 

ALL GIRLS ROBOTICS COMPETITION! 
We are set to compete in November at the All Girls Robotics Competition in Bloomfield Hills.  Our 2016 FRC robot gets to play one more time on the Stronghold field, but this time manned only by the girls on our team! Boys only get to cheer them on. 
Can't wait to see how our amazing girls do on Saturday, November 12th!  More details to come! 

New youth robotics teams started this week as well in our room.  We are happy to be able to support them and allow them to use our space. It's also good for them to see what  they can do in the future with robots with the skills they learn!  A few of our team's mentors started the new VEX IQ teams call the Chimichangas.  This is a play off our own name (Chimeras).  We tend to have our name mispronounced a lot and a few people started giving us nicknames and Chimichangas was one of them.  So although technically it's fried burritos, they like to think of themselves as mini Chimeras with extra spice in their fire!  (since Chimeras are a fire-breathing mythical beast) 
We hope they do well and will mentor them as needed. You can visit their Facebook page HERE for updates! 

Over the weekend we went to an off season FRC competition at Kettering University. Friday was fun with mentor matches in which our team of mentors came in second! Way to go Jon Uren & Matt Wagner! This was a blast for the team to watch the adults play the game. 
Saturday was the competition. Unfortunately we were plagued with radio and programming issues, something that has been an issue off and on all season. Thankfully we had a bit of outside help and were able to correct the problems eventually. (our programmer this year had graduated and was gone to college, we are now training new team members!) However, our issues left us with low ranking  points, but our performances after correcting problems still led us to be picked by the number one seed alliance for the eliminations! This was a shocker for us and made what was kind of a bummer day into an amazing one! We made it into the semi-finals with Teams 27 & 67. 
Overall it was a really fun weekend and we were happy to play the game again and see the other teams!  This was the last time many of our team (the boys - girls have an all girl comp in November) got to play the Stronghold competition for the year. We're going to miss this game! Really was a fun to play, watch and build a robot for! 
​What a season 2016 has been! 

Mentor match fun! 
1. We know our coach was really in a happy place!   2. One of our seniors from this year made it back in time to help out. Alyssa got to be the mentors drive coach.  3. Neat to be on an alliance with 5460! Tony is a mentor of ours as well! 4. The mentor team focused!  5. Matt from 5460 in action as human player!  6.  Gavin helping mentor Matt get the robot ready for a match. 

1. Some fun in the pits while trying to solve the radio issues.  2. Sam and Trista pose for a quick pic!  3. A match ending shot from a mentor match. Nice climb Jon!  4. Long day and frustrating day, but smiling faces from EliAna, Will, Sydney and Gavin.  3. Drive team waiting for a match.  5. Chosen by the 1st seed alliance for elims! SO exciting after the rough day we had!  6 & 7. Some fun dancing in the stands with Marshall, Grace, Sam and Trista.  8. Photobombed by the coach!  9.  End of the day team pic. Go Chimeras! 

​We got down to business this week cleaning up our robotics room and re-organizing. What a job!  Team 5460 Strike Zone, whom shared the space with us for the past few years were given their own room at CFI so were able to start making the room our own.
Over the years we've worked out of many different places, large and small, but we are hoping now to have this as our home for quite some time! No more moving! *fingers crossed* We also have enough room for a practice field for other teams to come and use as well, which we are really exited about!
Lots to do and organize, but it's a been another lift in spirits for everyone on the team.  

Working on our VEX robot for this season.