Coopertition - Honoring Friendly Competition - Tips & Encouragement from Team Galaxy Cats

Team Galaxy Cat Call 3

Team Galaxy Cat Call 2

Team Galaxy Cat conference 1

One of the important core values of the FLL competition is Coopertition, which is honoring friendly competition by providing and or receiving help, encouragement from other FLL teams. I am very excited to share that just today, some of us have a chance to talk to a award winning homeschool FLL team in Melbourne, Australia.

I connected with a very experienced coach of Team Galaxy Cat in the Classical Conversations Facebook page. Her team recently won 1st place in robot design and has advanced to regional championship in Sydney. I asked if her team will be willing to share some tips to help us get ready for this Saturday’s competition. The coach gladly agree to help, so we quickly arranged a conference call. It was Tuesday 7:30 am their time, and 3:30 pm Monday for us in the U.S.

The conference went very well. We met all 3 members of Team Galaxy Cat and two coaches (homeschool teachers & most supportive moms). Jacob, Joshua Wong, and I are the representative from the Robust Minds Robotics. The followings are some of the great tips that we learned from Team Galaxy Cat:

1. How does your team balance all 3 aspects of the FLL competition?

• Of course, our team is more excited about the robot game. However, they balanced other aspects by arranging fun activities to incorporate the core value and research project.

1. Do you feel chaotic and stressful like we do?

• Yes, we feel exactly the same way you feel - chaotic & never ready.

1. If there is no guidance from the coaches, will you be able to handle the competition?

• Other than the ride, all 3 team members confidently agree that they can complete the tasks without coaches’ help.

1. What do you do to cope with the unreliability of the robot?

• Two things we did to reduce the unreliability of the robot is, first, to use a simple position liner to ensure the robot is positioned in the same starting point. Secondly, always place the robot in a flat surface before turn on the power to ensure Gyro sensor position correctly.

1. On the day of the competition, try to have fun by greeting the judges and encouraging other teams.

2. The most important value you can learn is to learn new skills and have fun. There will always be more advanced teams that are very good at robot and research. But the Core Value of teamwork, incorporate fun at work, and demonstrate gracious professionalism is the priceless experience the students can learn.

3. Tips for the mom: on the competition day, have dads take charge of the directions. Because the moms and leading coaches are so attached to the kids and everything about the competition, it may not be a bad idea to have dads run the whole thing on the competition day, and moms just sit back and relax.

4. Don’t be stressed out. Have fun!

Before we ended our conference call, Team Galaxy showed us their cool Robot, Resilience the Dragon. We really appreciate Team Galaxy Cats' encouragement and tips. We wish them the best in their championship and hoping to see them in the World Championship.