On Saturday, February 24th, 2018 the two of us participated in the Maryland State VEX Tournament for the season of In the Zone. There were a total of 60 teams from all around Maryland who qualified for this tournament and we were split into two divisions: the Sollers Division and the Dundalk Division. We were put in the Dundalk Division, where we came across many familiar faces! We met up with our fellow alliance team members from the Hagerstown Competition, Team 183Z 'The Synobotz'. They were placed in the Sollers Division and we wished them the best of luck in this tournament! 
The first act before the actual matches was the team parade, where all of the teams line up in team numerical order and are announced one after the other to walk down a path to showcase their school and team pride. Many of the teams brought with them their school mascot costumes and banners, and it was a lot of fun! As for us, we made a small banner of our own and marched proudly towards the center of the gymnasium, showing all of our BioDragon pride! 
​ Overall, the tournament ran really smoothly. The games were all organized one after the other with minor technical difficulties and all of the teams were on time for their matches, at least in the Dundalk Division.
It was very interesting to be walking around and looking at some of the other teams' robots! There was one that was particularly interesting in design which used the turntables and looked and operated very similarly to a construction crane. Another team's robot used the same six-bar lift that we had, only their claw was made up of two rollers filled with rubber bands that would "suck" the cones and pick them up from the field. This design seemed to be a lot quicker way to pick up cones, with the only downside being that sometimes the robot would drop the cones with additional movement. 
During the competition, we played a total of 7 matches. Out of those 7, there was only one where we lost connection with our robot during the match. But unlike last year where our robot's cortex burned out, our robot this year stayed strong throughout the games. Our only concern was that the servo motor that our claw was running on might overheat and become inoperable during the games, but thankfully that didn't happen. 
Some changes we made to the robot in the time between the Hagerstown competition and this tournament include making the lift more steady and secure and making the claw smaller and more compact to compensate for the new base lifter we incorporated which took up a little bit more space than our older version.