Our team had a great time at the FIRST Orlando Regional March 8-10! Our head mentor, Dave Owen, won the Woodie Flowers Award! This award is given to one FRC mentor at each Regional Competition who ‘lead, inspire, and empower using excellent communication skills.’ Congratulations Dave!

Team 1557 also had the opportunity to create a friendship with FIRST Team 3132 from Sydney, Australia! On Thursday afternoon we had a BBQ with their team and they brought Australian snacks for us to try! On the following days we ate lunch with the three other Lake County teams – 2797, 4065, and 4066. We all had a great time.

Perhaps the most unique part of our Competition was the design of our pit. We set up a booth in our pit using whiteboards and our Kinect system to take pictures of FRC members and visitors. Kids and adults at the FIRST competition wrote their inspiration on the whiteboard and then posed for a picture. The pictures were added to a slideshow that was running on the monitor outside our pit all weekend.