Gym Setup - Tarps, Carpet, and Pit

Bleachers

The north (right side looking from hallway/lobby) bleachers should be fully extended and the south (left) bleachers should be fully retracted.

Setup - Tarps

It is necessary to tarp the gym floor prior to carpet and hardboard. KnightKrawler owns enough tarps to cover every square inch of the gym floor. Every place where a robot cart or tool chest may be pushed must be covered. Some tarps are old color guard tarps, others are old billboards. It is critical that tarps are folded back up in a specific way to ensure they can fit on our tarp carts.

Place the largest old color guard tarp in the place the field will be positioned. Before hardboard is laid out for the field position, use billboard tarps to ensure all gym floor is covered starting at the north east corner of the gym (hallway and extended bleachers). NO WOOD OF THE GYM FLOOR CAN BE VISIBLE. Adjust the large color guard tarp and billboard tarps to ensure this corner is completely covered edge to edge.

The gym need not be fully tarped before laying down the underlayment and field carpet. Once enough tarps are placed, the field setup crew can begin laying out hardboard and carpet. Remaining tarps needed to cover the pits can be added by students at any time later in the night.

Tarps for the pit area must cover all of the gym floor along the east (hallway) wall and up to the south (left) bleachers. Layout tarps to cover these two edges, starting in the south east corner. This will leave the tarp overlap close to the field, which will have the highest traffic for robot carts.

Taps should be taped with gaffers tape. Avoid using duct tape if possible. Tarps can be taped with 6” strips of tape every 4’ in paces that are not high traffic areas. In high traffic areas, full tape seams when possible. Check with the field setup crew to ensure you are not using tape they need for the field.

If any part of the gym is not tarped, it should be the West wall. This is where the field reset crew usually sits, first aid and inspection. The pits should be tarped all the way to the west wall. Any place that has robot cart traffic must be fully tarped, however it is not necessary to cover all the way to the wall in these less trafficked areas if there is only 6-8” feet of wood floor exposed.

Teardown - Folding Billboard Tarps

Folding the tarps sounds like a trivial task, but in reality it can create a big mess if not done correctly. The tarp cart requires tarps to be folded into a 24”x24” bundle to fit. Tarps that are not folded correctly have resulted in tarps sticking out of the cart, and/or the stack falling off the cart.

Complete flip the tarp over so the black side is down.This removes dirt and trash.
Two people grab the corners of the short side of the tarp, drag to the other short side, folding the tarp in half.
Go back to the fold, and fold again. Always fold in the same direction to avoid bubbles and wrinkles.
Continue to fold until the tarp is about 20” in width. It may be necessary to make the last fold as ⅓ and ⅓ instead of folding in half.
The final step is to make a square, start with a 12-14” fold and continue folding up the length of the tarp. A second person may need to help keep the tarp edges aligned as the person folding the squares continues to fold the tarp end over end to make the square.

Teardown - Folding Old Color Guard Tarps

The small color guard tarp pieces can be folded in the same manner as the billboard tarps. However the large tarp must be folded differently. This tarp requires an accordion fold and 20-30 people to perform this fold. Do not attempt this fold without the assistance of an adult who has done this fold before. This large tarp has its own cart.

Volunteer Role: Tarp Coordinator

Friday Night (night before Week Zero)

Remove all tarps from the blue cart and set on the first row of the spectator bleachers
Find additional color guard tarps, they are large and can be kept on their carts until needed
Start with the largest color guard tarp. We will call this the field tarp. Layout this tarp in the approximate location of where the field will be positioned. The field tarp should start at the main bleachers (no gap). Do not add carpet or underlayment plywood to the tarp yet.
Follow tarp layout guidelines (above). Ensure the gym floor is covered entirely along North, South and East walls.
Layout pits following pit diagram prepared prior to the tournament to accommodate the number of teams attending the event.
Layout electrical cords following the pit diagram. No more than 10 pits should be on the same circuit.

Saturday Night (end of tournament)

Start folding up all billboard tarps first. Stack in bottom of blue tarp cart. Refold any tarps that will not fit in the cart completely.
Coordinate students needed to fold large color guard tarp

Carpet

Setup

The carpet is marked (on the back side edges) to indicate which edges have been historically used to align with the center of the field. However other considerations may result in a different layout. Some of the carpet has been rolled up for a full year. This can result in wavy carpet. It is generally best to put the center of the roll under the driver stations. The center of the roll is often the carpet that will not lay down flat. It is best to have any “waves” in the carpet at the ends of the field or entirely off the field.

Teardown

During tear down, DO NOT REMOVE TAPE from the carpet used to indicate field markings. Usually this will be the red, blue and white tape. The students will use the carpet to continue practice. Leaving the tape on the carpet will save students hours of effort to remark the field. In previous years, volunteers have attempted to leave half the field marked. In 3 attempts, the incorrect tape was removed all 3 times due to conflicting communication. Going forward, leave all field marking tape on the carpet.

When rolling up the carpet, start at the end that was under the driver station. Roll towards the center of the field. This will help ensure the carpet when used next year will have the “wavey” part of the carpet under the driver stations.

Pit Layout

Pits should be laid out to accommodate safety, good traffic flow, and electrical distribution.

Pits should accommodate the following dimensions as closely as possible. Exact pit layout may vary based on number of teams. One example is below.

10’x10’ pits
8-12’ walkways
Gym floor with north bleachers is 119’ along bleachers, 102’ along hallway
1’ between scoring table and field wall supports (avoid people walking over cables here)
Tape off cart areas for team queuing and cart parking. Three spots 5’x5’ each
If there are 28 or fewer teams, remove pits 32, 33, 34, 20, 21 (make another walkway)
Use empty space by P11 for the U of M team, or a team with 2 bots.