San Dieguito Academy’s Team Paradox 2102 FIRST Robotics team won the Gracious Professionalism award at the 2013 FIRST Robotics Sacramento Regional on March 24.

The award that team Paradox received is given to the team that FIRST Robotics feels displays the most gracious professionalism, a part of the ethos of FIRST. Gracious professionalism is a way of doing work that encourages high-quality work, respects individuals and the community, and emphasizes the value of others.

This  year’s challenge is titled Ultimate Ascent. In an octagonal arena, two teams of three robots each compete to shoot Frisbees into five goals of different heights, each worth different points. The first 15 seconds are an Autonomous period, during which the robots operate on prior given commands. The next two minutes of the match are spent in a TeleOp mode, during which the said robots are under driver control.

Near both ends of the field are three-tiered pyramids made of metal pipes. Robots, for an additional 10, 20, or 30 points, can climb the pyramid by hanging from the lower bars, or by continuously climbing the vertices. Each tier climbed is an additional ten points.

The team left on Wednesday March 20 on a 9-hour bus ride up to Sacramento and on Thursday, they toured the Intel Facility in Sacramento.

On Friday, the Robotics competition started. Team Paradox played well, being seeded first for the first few matches. Over the course of two days, they slowly dropped, ending in fourteenth  before the end of the preliminary matches.

Team 1868, an all-girls team named the Space Cookies, won the Chairman’s Award. Team 1388 took the Spirit Award, an award that team Paradox has received multiple times at the San Diego Regional competition.