Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

i appreciate all the support i got from the teams with remedies for my hoarseness. Mints, hi\ugs, candy, water, fruit punch, cough drops, etc.

i have had a cold all week and i finally caught up with me.
Ted and Jack did a great job with the MC and Game Announcer jobs.

As of 9:30 pm Friday I can talk again and plan to rest my voice to be ready to do the elims on Saturday afternoon.

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

Just cozy up to whoever ends up in 1st seed tomorrow. That strategy seems to work. :p

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

Don't worry, we're saving that seat nice and warm for you guys :P

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

Well, seeing that first backup team is looking highly unlikely... ;)

Hopefully we'll give y'all a show in our three matches today.

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

Congratulations to all the teams this weekend! Everybody was fantastic and it was a pleasure to work with every team we were aligned with.

I love this new venue. This was one of the greatest events I've ever been to.

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Aside from the regular congratulations, BIG congrats to 4451 for being such an excellent rookie team. What an awesome machine and strategy. Glad that you are qualified for St. Louis.

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

It's a special kind of awesome to see the team that helped shaped you go out and perform at the top of their game. Congrats to my home team, MORT, for battling the demons and pulling out an impressive victory!!

Kudos to 11s partners as well. As we all know, these events are won as a team and that's exactly what you guys pulled off.


GO MORT!

-Brando

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

I'm proud of my team in that we ended as the first seed, but it seems that our luck had to run out at some time. The winning alliance (and even the finalists) were truly brilliant and the cream of the crop at the event.

Now, for the usual thank yous:

@2363: Thanks for joining our alliance. I had hoped we could put up the same numbers as our qualification run, but alas it was not to be so. On a slightly separate note, you guys are one of the nicest teams I've had the honor to work with. Good luck at Virginia.

@539: Thanks for joining our alliance and trying to fix your errors. It takes a lot to admit that you're not going to hold up and take a seat.

@2914: You guys are truly an exceptional defensive team. It was an honor to play against and with you guys.

@11: Thanks for being up front with us about alliance selections. I suppose if we had taken your advice, this post would have a slightly different tone, but I hate to dwell on what could have been.

- Sunny G.

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

I just have to share my favourite moment from Palmetto. It's our last match of the qualifying and we (281) are playing with 1598, and 4748 against teams 435/3140/3506. It's a tough match for us (final seedings: 24th/30th/64th vs 4th/46th/21th). We play some tough defense on 435, 1598 does our scoring, and I have no clue what 4748 did. As the match ends, the unofficial score shows 25-14 our favor.

We get a bit excited to have done so well against 435 and one of the kids on 4748 (I think he was acting as coach) starts asking "did we win? did we win?" We start to calm him down by saying we don't know yet and it really looks like the opposing teams has three 10 point hangs, so probably not. The refs come out to inspect the hangs, we watch, and the thumbs go down for all three hangs. They are all touching the ground, so we start to cheer a bit more. The kids asks again "did we win? did we win?" and we say, yes it looks like we did.

He goes crazy with joy. He starts jumping around "we won!!, we won!". It's like he just won the finals on Einstein!! His team mates are trying to unplug their drivers station and he jumps up on their back, "we won, we won". By this time, I heading to retrieve our cart; but I can't stand to watch this kid not get any love back. So I hold out my arms for a hug. He takes a couple of steps towards me and JUMPS into my arms. I have my arms wrapped around his waist and his legs are wrapped around my waist. I think there were some more "we won"s in there too. It's a good thing he was a bean pole, because if he had any mass to him, we would have been on the floor.

A second or so later, he's down and I'm on my way to get the cart. I start talking to his team mate who also has cart duty, and I start to put 2 & 2 together. This is one of those over-whelmed rookie teams. Any veteran team recognizes them. A drivable plywood base, with poles on the corners which held plastic meshing block discs. No dumper, no climbing, and the drivers are still figuring out how to drive it because it's only been running since practice day. They were 0-7. They had lost a couple of close matches, but had also lost a few blow outs. This was their last match of the season and they had WON IT!! The kid had won on Einstein!

I doubt anyone from 4748 reads Chief Delphi regularly, and I still don't know his name. But the joy in this kid just brought tears to my eyes as I read this to my wife, and it has made my season.

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

I saw this as I was posting up to film one of 2815's matches, and I wish I was filming! I've seen that raw enthusiasm on just a few occasions, most of them involving the finals. (I recall a kid from the long-defunct 803 back in 2006, who happened to walk by inspection right as 1293 nipped its weight problems. He was just as psyched as I was.)

2815's performance at Palmetto was not to our expectations. We came in wanting to kick butt and get our third straight Palmetto title, but our problems were just too much to merit being picked. Our laundry list for South Florida is already underway--we've got a lot to do to punch our ticket to St. Louis.

I'd like to give thanks to all the teams that gave us help and pointers as we worked through our problems.

Shoutout to MORT for beating us to a third win at Palmetto. We'll race you to four. :)

Additional shootout to ROBOTZ Garage for their Rookie All-Star win and their comeback from that terrifying fall in SF2-1. A lot of teams would've thrown it in after that, but these guys took a timeout and parked that robot right back up on Level 3. Orlando had better watch out.

Time to lick our wounds and make our plans for South Florida. See some of you there, see some more of you at SCRIW!

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

To comment purely on the venue,

It was excellent to say the least. With 65 teams, seating was plentiful, the pits were nice and open, and I really cannot think of a major complaint.

One thing that was extremely off-putting was the single doorway between the stands and the pits. Not entirely what the rationale behind that was, but it was frustrating to say the least. Not to mention that I almost ran into someone going the other way a few times.

- Sunny G.

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

There were two! One was a direct doorway, the other was out the pit entrance and through the hallway. The latter was much quicker for us.

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

Myrtle Beach Convention Center is an awesome venue. Bring it back next year!

All the teams were great and we had an amazing time! There was some awesome action all weekend long. My favorite 836 match was #51 and the dual-bot blockade (4582 and 3976) on 836 and our under-the-pyramid blockade running. You guys made for some awesome action!

Also, thanks to the honest person who turned my iPad camera adapter in to Pit Admin/Lost and Found :)

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

I suppose that depends on which side of the pits/stands you were camped on.

But even a two-door passage on the direct doorway would've been infinitely better.

- Sunny G.

Re: The Palmetto Regional's New Location
 

Team 3824 would like to thank the RoboBees for the opportunity to play with them and the Hokie Guard in the elims. Our team had a blast! The RoboBees are a top notch organization.

One moment that impressed me from off the playing field...
With all three of our teams being large, by the time the last of our kids made their way down to get the Finalist medal, the venue had run out of the medals. A little while later after we were all back up in the stands, one of the RoboBees came up with an armful of medals for those kids on our team that did not get one. Not sure who all gave up theirs so our kids could have one, but that was very classy.

Big Congrats also to the RoboBees for winning Chairman's and good luck at Nationals!