Edward Jones Dome
St. Louis, MO  63101
USA

On Monday April, 19 2012, two groups of the Waialua Robotics Team met at the Los Angeles International Airport. One group was already in Anaheim, California while the other group flew in from Honolulu, Hawaii.  From there everyone traveled to St. Louis, Missouri for the FRC World Championship event. The team arrived in Missouri late Monday night so Tuesday was a nice relaxing day for The Hawaiian Kids. Everyone was able to sleep in and enjoy their day at Hammer’s Food & Fun while making time to do some sightseeing. During the duration of the trip, Team 359 got to go all the way to the top of the St. Louis Arch and even attend a Cardinals game.

The next day the team got a quick look at the St. Louis Gateway Arch. After that brief activity, Team 359 went to the Edwards Jones Dome to unpack their crate and to present a presentation to the public. Lead coordinator, Glenn Lee, gave some helpful tips on how to sustain a robotics team and some program management tips. Oceanic Time Warner cable also sponsored a dinner for all the Hawaii teams that qualified for the FIRST Championship event.

Competition started the next day with a few practice matches and qualification matches following that. By the end of the day, The Hawaiian Kids had a record of 3-0. To end the day, Oceanic Time Warner also chose to extend their sponsorship and gave another complimentary dinner to all the Hawaii teams at the event. Friday was strictly a day filled with qualification matches, and Team 359 had some hard matches which made it difficult to get any coopertition points to up their ranking. The next day each team had one more qualification match and then the alliance selections began where Waialua was the first pick for the 5th seated alliance. Their alliance advanced past the quarter finals but were defeated in the semi-finals by the 1st seated alliance. Although everyone hoped to make it to Einstein, the team was still proud to have made it that far in that division.