The Nomads from Knowhere - "Against All Odds Award"
The pride of Almaden Preparatory School, the The Nomads from Knowhere excelled at the 2006 Northern California State Championships of First LEGO League (VIDEO)
The global robotics competition for youngsters, sponsored by the famed LEGO toy maker from Sweden, offered grade and middle school kids a grand challenge on a microscopic scale. Under the theme of "Nano Quest" students were inspried to create clever solutions to difficult problems and urged to "Explore Existing Science on the Nanotechnolgy Level."
The Nomads did very well in the first round regional competition, taking second place overall. Alas, second place wasn't good enough to qualify for the State tournament. Although there was a slight chance for the Nomads, the 64th seat in the N. Cal state tournament was awarded to an international team from Amman, Jordan.
So, while the 63 Bay Area and one Arabian team spent six weeks - including their winter vacations - fine tuning their robots and trying to obtain the holy grail - a perfect score- the Nomads finished their year knowing that the had done their best, but that they would not have any chance compete again this year.
Alas, world events shifted in the Nomads favor and the team from Jordan was denied entry into the United States. So, with barely 36 hours to go before the big day- the lads and lassy from Almaden Prep got the nod they had hoped for- a chance to go to State! Three team members were scheduled to sit for High School entrance exams that day, so the burden fell on the remaining two members to dust off their 'bot, re-learn their routines and try to maximize their scoring potential. In the end, strings were pulled and the entire Nomads team was on hand for the battle of the bots at San Jose City College.
With a brushed up 'bot and a few new tricks, the Nomads pulled off a truly gutsy performance. Though their scores didn't make it into the top three awards positions, ALL of their scores were near the top in EVERY catagory. The fact that the Nomads did so well on less than two days notice did not escape the judge's attention. Acknowledging their top level performance under tight time pressure, the judges gave the first award of tournament to the Nomads From Knowere, the Judge.s Award - "Against All Odds."
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