It turns out the display I wanted to use is just not working.  After ALOT of research along with trial and error, I've found that its current state is just not usable.  For starters, the driver chip seems to a UPD645 variant, not the ST7735 I was expecting to find.  The driver ic is also on the other pcb that I had removed.  I do plan on making the display a new project and continuing the reverse engineering to see if I can do something useful with this board and post for others to hopefully learn off of. However I dont feel I would be able to complete something before the contest deadline.  

Therefore, I am going to switch to a small OLED display instead.  I will begin working on that tonight and update the project in the next day or two to a new setup.