This weekend, team SPORK made it to the semi-finals with an amazing alliance. Team SPORK was successful in winning the Chairman’s Award and we are very proud of Pooja Anil for being a Dean’s List Finalist. Overall, the weekend was very exciting and we can’t wait to get back to work to prepare for the State Championship.
Competition
This category is going to be show what events Team SPORK will be at.
UNC Asheville Regional
We are doing terrific in the final matches as the 4th seed alliance along with Robo Lions and Cortechs!!!
PLP Podcast
Recently, SPORK was invited to appear on the Pine Lake Public Radio podcast. Representing our team was Jacob (Engineering Director), along with Jeremiah (Mechanical lead) and Jackson (Mechanical, Marketing). During the 15-minute Q and A, SPORK members discuss a variety of topics, including this year’s challenge and our team’s progress, structure, and operations.
You can check out the podcast below (SPORK interview begins at 18:09):
THOR
This past weekend (Sept. 23-24) Team SPORK went to Raleigh to compete at Thundering Hurd of Robots also known as THOR. We were placed in 11th after winning four of our six qualification matches and eventually moved on to become the 8th alliance captain. With EastBots and The Chargers at our sides we went into the quarterfinals to have two close matches against the 1st place alliance and unfortunately get knocked out. We had an amazing time and learned so much. Not only that, we managed to not break anything at the competition as well which may just be a SPORK first! 
Team SPORK Interest Meeting
Team SPORK will be hosting a meeting on August 25th for anyone who is interested in Team SPORK and what we do. We encourage anyone that goes to Pine Lake Preparatory and wishes to pursue a career in either operations or engineering to attend this meeting. We will provide anyone who attends with a substantial amount of information about how we operate, what we do during build season and off season, how to join the team, and plenty more things. If you are even considering pursuing anything in operations or engineering please consider spending an hour with us from 2:30 to 3:30 on Thursday to learn more about how SPORK works and how it can better you.
STEM Building Open House
Team SPORK will be at Pine Lake Preparatory’s STEM Building Ribbon Cutting! We will be showing off our beloved Sir SPORKalot and will have Shooter McGavin and Scorpion. The Open House will be on August 20th and will have performances and a general Meet-n-Greet with our new and old teachers. We will be positioned towards the middle of the building in between the two stairwells. Our members cannot wait to see new faces excited about STEM and Pine Lake’s brand new building!
Asheville District Competition
We completed our Asheville District Competition on the number 6 alliance! We are currently ranked 14 out of 52 in North Carolina. After our second competition this is a great achievement for our team. Our Competition, Pit, Drive, and Strategy Teams excelled and everything went smoothly during our second competition. We were chosen to be apart of an alliance with T-Rex #4935, and REaCH Omegabytes #5727. We have done very well and are very excited to see who all qualifies for District Championship! We hope to take our new knowledge and experience of FRC STRONGHOLD and excel at District Championship! Good luck to all teams competing!
Greensboro District Competition
We completed our Greensboro District Competition in the Top 10! We are currently ranked 13 out of 52 in North Carolina. This is a great achievement for our team. Our Competition, Pit, Drive, and Strategy Teams excelled and everything went smoothly during our first competition. We were chosen to be apart of an alliance with Cyber Blue #234, and Elemental Dragons #3680. We finished in 7th place overall at the competition as well as winning the Gracious Professionalism Award and Hard Hat Safety Award. We have done very well and are very excited for the Asheville District! We hope to take our new knowledge and experience of FRC STRONGHOLD to win at Asheville! Good luck to all teams competing!
Bag-n-Tag
This week we finished our robot and had our annual bag and tag ritual. We worked at NuVision until 11:59 Tuesday night. Many of us showed up in our pjs for a pizza and pajama party! Though the robot was finished our job is not yet completed. Our shooting mechanism and our programming was in need of some improvements. For the coming weeks until and after competition we will continue working on our second robot, in order to complete all the challenges to the best of our robot’s ability.
2016 Kickoff
Today Team SPORK met to watch the reveal of this years challenge, FIRST Stronghold. Our kickoff went well and we are already creating strategies for the new challenge. We would also like to thank Newell Rubbermaid for lending us their facilities. We wish everyone the best of luck and hope that everyone is as excited for this years challenge as we are.