Worst Moments in Team History

[acdcfan259]

This is in response to a thread i saw about the best moments in team history. (If this thread exists in some other form let me know) Same idea except name the worst moments in your team history.

For me, getting eliminated by the 8th seeded alliance after doing well and being picked by the number one seed. (only been on the team one year)

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by acdcfan259

This is in response to a thread i saw about the best moments in team history. (If this thread exists in some other form let me know) Same idea except name the worst moments in your team history.

For me, getting eliminated by the 8th seeded alliance after doing well and being picked by the number one seed. (only been on the team one year)

There are far far worse things then just getting eliminated during a competition. And such things are usually best left amongst their respective teams. Airing dirty laundry can cause some serious hurt feelings amongst the ranks.

[Conor Ryan]

There is no worst moments in FIRST Team history, some moments are just well...better than others. And those moments that are less than spectacular, well we learn a lot from them, some of us just happen to learn more than others.

[Libby K]

Koko Ed beat me to it.

I'm not sure many people will be willing to share their team's 'worst moment'. Sometimes, teams have their dark times. It happens. But airing dirty laundry is not the way to solve any of it.

Also, getting eliminated really isn't that bad- some teams would kill to just be in the eliminations. It's disappointing, that's true, but if that's your worst moment you and your team are pretty well off.

[rocketperson44]

Our team's worst moment was the 13 years of FIRST's existence in which it did not exist.

We are all rather lucky to be with a team, no matter how well they are fairing.

[Jonathan Norris]

I'll share one, 610's 2005 season... playing defense in a game where you can get a 30 point penalty for touching an opposing robot in a loading zone isn't a sound strategy. Didn't work out too well, we got noticed... but this time for the wrong reasons, placing 64th out of 66 in the regional we had won three years prior and received chairmans two years prior was a little embarrassing.

But on the plus side next year brought a new group of team leaders and a new vision for the team, and had what I would argue as our most successful season to date in '06.

[dtengineering]

The worst moment for me occurrs annually, usually with about ten days left in build (quite often around Valentine's day...) when we are:

a) overweight
b) broken down
c) burned out

And that's just the robot....

Then we get over it, and move on, then come back for more the next year.

Jason

[Herodotus]

Worst moment for our team, or at least the most "oh.. no" moment, was weighing the 2006 robot a day before ship and finding out it was something like 15 pounds over weight. Needless to say, we spent a significant amount of time drilling holes that night and then ext day. Our vice principal at the time even volunteered to drive the crate down to FedEx himself so we could stretch out our time on ship day. The robot apparently arrived at the FedEx loading dock two minutes before closing time.

Crazy couple of days.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

2005.

We built the worst robot in FIRST history. To this day I have yet to see a worse robot.

How bad was it? Well it couldn't move... it had an arm... that managed to knock down the hanging tetras... sometimes

There were also team-work "issues" and "fights"...

Ironically, I think I learned more this year than any other year on the team. Failure inspired me to pursue success; to turn team 100 around; to prove that we weren't a bunch of jokers... At the time most people would have laughed at the idea of team 100 wining anything... Not anymore...

Sometimes our greatest failures lay the foundations for our greatest success.

[Joe J.]

The worst moment in Lightning Robotics team history would be 2003, the whole season. We had failures with both the team and the robot.

But out of the darkest times come the most valuable lessons, we learned a lot from that season, and we built on that focusing on building strong team instead of a strong robot. We grew as a team peaking in the 2006 season.
A sponsor change over for the 2007 season completely destabilized the team both mentors and students.

2008 was a rebuilding season, Sadly though there are now only 4 people left on our team that remember what that year was like, some of our newer mentors seem to be leading the team back down that path.

[Rick TYler]

In the semifinals in the Washington championships, with two of our robots teamed up and poised to go on to the finals, a team member forgot to turn on the power switch. I'm pretty sure nothing is quite as depressing to a drive team as watching the #1 'bot in qualifying sit motionless during the last semi-final match with the power switch off. There were tears. There was depression. However... no one on the team ever ragged on the person who did this, the adults never mentioned it again, and the team was encouraged by winning the Innovate Award and a special award for Best Team Documentary Video. Even with their bitter disappointment, they still hung together as a team. It was the worst of times. It was the best of times.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by rocketperson44

Our team's worst moment was the 13 years of FIRST's existence in which it did not exist.

We are all rather lucky to be with a team, no matter how well they are fairing.

That's a really nice way of putting it. Kudos.

[DarkFlame145]

My worst moments where from Rack N' Roll. It was about 3AM and T-Rx was still up building their robot and it was ship date. The robot went into the crate in chunks and was to be finished at FLR. During the FLR we got a rolling chassis going on the first day. That's basically all we got finished, but luckly that drive train was all about shoving and made us one of the best defensive robots. The last blow to me was when for the 2nd time in team history we didn't get picked for the elims. That robot went and was on the winning alliance at PARC just this past May, as a lapbot.

To end this on a positive note, the best moment of my FIRST career had to be this year's PARC, it was 222 and 145 against a full alliance of 3 in the Quarterfinals. After 4 matches we finally won, 2 V 3 =P. All thanks to good strategy and communication .

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

The worst moment for me occurrs annually, usually with about ten days left in build (quite often around Valentine's day...) when we are:

a) overweight

At least you have something built.

The worst moment in our team history was when the FedEx guy came at 11 am and we asked if we could be his last stop of the day instead of his first

[Billfred]

The winner for us: Losing the distribution block in QF1-2 at Palmetto in 2007. It was preventable, and we might just have forced a rubber match against the 1251/1626/1758 alliance if we'd caught it in time.

Still, the lesson we learned from that match proved beneficial when it came time to place the electrical panel for Speedy Debris this year. No electrical problems whatsoever once our teacher (who has an appreciable size advantage over the students who laid it out) cinched down the connections.