The path to becoming the best RoboCup Junior team in Canada was not an easy one, and my team and I worked immensely for this achievement. We had to go from essentially no robotics experience in the fall to knowing the countless things required of you come April.
My team competed at Saint Andrew's College, essentially the regional competition for Ontario. After performing well, we were invited to the international competition in Montreal, Quebec. There, we faced a challenge. The tournament organizers mistakenly used the wrong type of grass on their field. It worked for the Montreal competitors, who had been practicing on it, but our motors were built for the regulation ones.
This caused all of our motors to fry and burn, despite our robots being superior. This taught our team to think on our feet. We stayed up late trying to come up with a solution. We tried everything, even searching Montreal on a Sunday for a place that sells the proper motors. We found a solution that somewhat worked: removing as many components as possible to make our robots lighter, leaving less weight for the motors to bear. As you can imagine, this had its downsides and led to poor performance in Montreal.
Luckily, the Canadian RoboCup representative recognized that we were doomed from the start and took us to France despite the shortcomings that were beyond our control. I learned a lot from this experience and have developed more patience and determination.