Ziggity had been working since last September on three events for the competition. He partnered with his best bud for two of the building events and divided up the material with another partner for an academic event. The team had been very successful last year and made the trip to Florida to represent our state in the national competition. The pressure was on to attempt a repeat. The team had won the regional competition in February and knew that the second place team was in overdrive working to earn the coveted first place spot.
We arrived at the competition campus early that Saturday morning to check in their mousetrap-powered vehicle. They then went over to the boomilever event where they had one of the first competition times. These boys had worked months and been through countless design changes and improvements in creating this structure. They had not performed well at the regional event, and were excited to show their stuff with their significantly improved design.
The object of the event is to create a structure out of wood and glue that is as lightweight as possible but that will hold as much weight as possible, up to about 30 pounds.
When it was their turn, they got set up,
prepared to begin adding weight by pouring sand into the bucket,
kept pouring... and pouring... and pouring... until... it broke.
The judge weighed the bucket and sand combo before asking Ziggity to return all that sand back to it's starting point.
The boys were absolutely thrilled with their performance and couldn't wait to see how they compared to others in the competition.
One of the neatest things about the event was how encouraging all the coaches and parents were to all the competitors. It was a really supportive atmosphere with one enthusiastic coach even showing off his team's unique design and explaining to every interested kid the physics behind the design. Many parents were taking pictures not only of their own kids' projects, but also of other teams' designs as well. There were so many encouraging words and "good job" s floating around... until the last group of teams was up. As many had been doing all day, I walked over to take a picture of one team's design. A coach, who hadn't been around for most of the competition, approached me and, in her snarkiest voice, said, "Please do NOT take a picture of our project."
Now, she has every right to request that, but I put on my most pleasant smile and said, "I'll gladly not, but I'm curious why you're asking. Everyone has been sharing photos and ideas all morning."
With attitude, "The website clearly states that no photos are to be taken during the competition (it doesn't) and we only want our parents to be photographing our design."
"That's interesting. I'm sorry you feel that way, but good luck to your team."
I hope I killed her with kindness because I was pretty steamed with her attitude. It stuck with me for hours. Their school was the only other one representing our county, and I was embarrassed to be associated with them in any way at all. Yuck.
But moving right along, Ziggity's second event was the mousetrap vehicle. The object was to use the snap of a mousetrap or two to power a vehicle to travel a specified distance in a short period of time. Ziggity and Best Bud had won this event handily at regionals, so many teams were there to watch how they did this time around. They had made design improvements since the previous competition and had tested it thoroughly. Their final test the day before had gone perfectly. They were very confident going into their first run.
And that is where the fun ends. The first run appeared to be slightly misaimed and veered left out of the testing area. As they set up for their second run, they overcompensated for the previous error causing the vehicle to veer right into the crowd. Because the crowd's interference didn't allow a measurement to be taken the judges gave them a third opportunity. Nerves frazzled by this point, they were overzealous in triggering the snap causing the vehicle to take a little jump to the side and again veering off the course. They didn't even get a legal run in.
Talk about crushed. And embarrassed. And feeling like they had let their team down with what should have been easy winning points.
But the aftermath was the most interesting thing. They both wanted to get out of there and get some fresh air so we decided to walk across campus to put that wretched vehicle in the car. On the walk, I was listening carefully to their conversation in case they needed help navigating the devastation. Each of them made one statement that alluded to a mistake the other may have made. And then they set out to encourage one another, figure out what might have gone wrong, and move on. Don't get me wrong, the disappointment was still huge and very raw, but they handled it. I told them that it was very possible that they learned a much bigger life lesson from this failure and how they were dealing with it than they ever might have learned through winning. . What fantastic young men they are becoming. I couldn't have been prouder - even if they had won.
The final event was a written anatomy test focusing on the nervous and digestive systems. Ziggity was pretty casual about his studying for this event and, in my eyes, appeared over-confident. He came out for the test saying that both he and his partner felt that it went pretty well. Since that was the final event slot of the day, we didn't have to wait long to find out that he was right.
Ziggity ended up medaling in both the boomilever and the anatomy events. Their team came in second, missing first place -and another trip to nationals- by mere points. We celebrated our victories and our defeats by heading directly to the nearest ice cream joint. It was a nice way to close out a long day of science, celebration, and really big life lessons.
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