Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

I made this thread last year so I figured I'd make it again this year with Kickoff right around the corner. Think of it as an awards show for FRC. Feel free to comment with who you thought won each category or even make your own category!

Best Match: Einstein Finals, Match 1. This match had a little bit of everything, from great autonomous modes to amazing strategies and full court shooting. Runners up: Battlecry Finals, Match 3 and IRI Finals, Match 2.

Best Alliance: This one was a tough one, but I'm going with the World Champs (610, 1241, 1477). They may not have had the 90 point autonomous or any climbs over 10 points, but they found a way to win. If I had to pick the alliance that was most fun to watch, it would be Newton Champs (3476, 303, 1640) simply because they had a little bit of everything on their alliance.

Best Personal Moment: Easy one, watching 1058's lead mentor Mike Pettingill win his long overdue Woodie Flowers Finalist Award at Pine Tree. Very deserving mentor who has made a huge impact on his students.

Top 10 Robots: 469, 67, 2056, 1114, 254, 1986, 118, 3467, 1310, 3476

Top Rookie: This goes to 4451. Their climb was simply unmatched by other rookies. 4564 from Maine is another team to watch out for in the future (Pine Tree Semi-finalists and Rookie All-Stars, Curie 8th seed).

Best moment: Watching the World Champs go all the way by bringing every round to three matches and pulling off numerous upsets. They earned that Championship.

What do you think?

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Best Moment: The finals at the Alamo Regional. Being relatively new to the sport of FRC, some of our mentors were not ready to experience such emotion overflow. I do believe that a few of them, my wife and I included, experienced tear covered eyes.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

I would have to second that moment.

Mr. B

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Best Matches: Just watching videos, the finals of MSC were insane. 469 was just on fire, so was 68, 2337 was playing super well... I can't imagine what it must have been like to be there, let alone be on the field.

I also think Semifinals 1-1 of Einstien (between 1678's alliance and 469's alliance) was pretty amazing too, triple FCSes and good sweeping action.

I don't know if I'd really put them up for the best robot in the world, but 973's offseason bot 9973 was pretty amazing. They hit 6 cycles basically every match, and really showed what a butterfly drive is capable of. Plus, it's basically the robot that every signal veteran team should have built instead of the one they actually built. It was that dominant, and super simple.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Have any video or pictures of the robot?

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

973 has some images on their facebook page.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Hardest thing to watch: 1114's robot in the semifinals on Galileo desperately reaching for the 2nd bar, looking almost like a human trying to claw their way off the side of a cliff, only to fall.

Slapstick Robots: There are a lot of potential moments for this, but looking back, watching 2337 pushing 3656 and inadvertently shoving 1806 off the pyramid and then immediately backing away and driving as far away from the tipped 1806 robot as possible is actually funny to watch. (Galileo Quarters 4-1)

Best thing that never was: 118's 30 point climber. Or maybe a full FCS alliance winning worlds.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

And this is match footage from Madtown, semi-final 1 match 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbMUF...F87 Rl8UkaaVs

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

I like finals 1 match 1 better.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Another category- Best Show of Gracious Professionalism: Curie Finals, when both alliances argued a call together, including the alliance benefiting from a ref's call.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Best moment: Having a team show up to the western regional with only one student, and having all the teams there pitch in to help him get ready for the event (including getting a special exemption to have members of another drive team to be coach and human player) He was going home because he thought his team wouldn't be selected for elims, but on the way back, he and his parents turned around to stay at the event anyways. He arrived just in time to get picked by an alliance!

Top Rookie: 4451 was phenomenal this year, making it on the top 25 list! A super fun team to be beside in the Newton pits. They have one wicked cart and pit display!

Though this totally biased, 4476 had a pretty phenomenal year. :ahh: With a Deans List winner on a rookie team is pretty cool. Also keeping world champs 1241 to one cycle was crazy. We certainly had a fun year, and are looking forward to another great one starting in 9 days :)

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Watchin 469 and 987 go head to head on the archimedes field:yikes:

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Lets just say that match is rather excruciating for me to watch ;)

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Best Moment: On Curie during selection, 1678 (the Citrus Circuits, #1 on Curie) asked at least 4 or 5 other top-8 teams including 2056 and 359 to join their alliance. They were refused every single time, but it was brilliant from a strategic point of view (regardless of any controversy over gracious professionalism). They ended up winning Curie.

Best Personal Moment: My team (1540) managed to change the dynamics on Curie in one match: Our alliance handed 2056 their 3rd loss of the season, and we caused them to end up 4th in Curie rankings. It was our best match of the season, and there's some argument for us claiming that we upheld the Curie curse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tVKesq22u0

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

More of a nod to the game in general, this is probably my favorite season (so far) purely because of how level the playing field was - and how we saw a number of teams (2590, for example) rise to fame.

Personal favorite moment: TCNJ, finishing second to last in the rankings. The team chose to stay and work on the robot while eliminations were running. Around the end of eliminations we thought we had most of the kinks worked out, and after a couple changes to our stragey we managed to snag a spot on an alliance with Storm and 316 at lenape to win.

Just goes to show, don't give up. Ever.

If Mike &/or Justin reads this: Give us a highlight reel. Pleeeeease?

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

A little bit of bias here, but I'm gonna agree with that first einstein match. It was a perfect match in every way, every robot was going all out, it looked like it was snowing on the field with how many frisbees were in the air the entire match. I also agree that 9973 was amazing. One of the simplest designs in 2013, yet it completely dominated every competition it went to.

4 teams, 1717, 2056, 1310, and 359. I hold nothing against these teams for those choices though as I would have done the same thing. In fact we were hoping it would play out that way.

Also I think 4814 was the rookie team of the year, I made a post about them in another thread:

I don't think any rookie team has ever been that close to winning champs while captaining their alliance.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

For us there were 4 best moments.

1. When we had two of our students drop out within a week of our regional leaving us with only 1 student and 1885 so graciously loaned us enough students and some mentors so that we could compete at the DC regional.

2. When 2415 & 116 picked us for elims.

3. Our final hang during the finals at the DC regional. http://youtu.be/2b5VOGTHSgc?t=12m55s

4. Finding out we were going to Championships. (Where 1885 loaned us students so we could compete there as well)

Thanks again to Virginia FIRST, Team 1885, Team 1522, and Team 3373. You all helped make our rookie year the best it could be.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Fun fact, way, way back, I believe it was 95, 100 (well, that wasn't our number back then) won champs. We were and are the only rookie to ever do so.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Technically winner of the '92 FIRST competition was the first rookie team to win a championship.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

My favorite defense match was at IRI, Quarter Finals 4, Match 3. AWESOME defense and counter defense played by all teams, including 118. This match had everything: 7 disk autos, defense, full court shooters and blockers, cyclers, and even a 20 pt climb.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Best Personal Moment:
Being selected by 2056 and 1114 to join their alliance at GTR-W. Never met such a good group of people, definitely learned a lot too! #hotglueconnections

Best Moment:
Seeing a team overlooked in so many ways, declined by 4 teams, then win the division. Watching 1678 make it to Einstein was inspiring.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Here's a video of Semi Final 1, match 2 at Madtown Throwdown where you can see what 9973 does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqgXJFR73QI

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Best match is without a doubt Finals 2 of IRI.
Watching the 67 alliance make a perfect strategy change, then 1114 nearly fall from the pyramid.

It was amazing in every way. The pinnacle of what Ultimate Ascent could be.

Behind that were Archimedes finals- the 469-987 auto battles were awesome. Newton finals were also particularly intense.

And Galileo Semis were awesome.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

My best moment was when I heard that 610 won Champs :yikes:

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Best moment: Finals at IRI. Unreal to watch!

Worst: Being so upset at Champs at the initial bad call on Einstein that we got up and left our fantastic seats and started the long drive home, only to find out later that we missed one of the most intense finals ever!

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

This moment was kind of... I don't even know. When you read it, you'll understand.

It happened at the NC Regional, in Raleigh. I was watching from the pits, but I had a perfect view of it. The Flying Platypi (2655) were climbing to the top of the pyramid. The were about to hook the top rung, and it was the last 30 seconds of the match - they were locked in for those points.
Until they fell.
Their entire bot tumbled all the way down, to the control floor of the field.
It was terrifying, and I'm pretty sure everybody's hearts stopped.
Luckily, they only broke the shield of their control board - which they happened to have a spare of.
Everything else was fine and they could continue.
I hope something like that never happens again, though.

Edit:
I apologize if this brings up bad memories, but I truly thought this was an amazing moment. They kept on going, and did an amazing job with the rest of the matches.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

My favorite moment doesn't have to do with my team per se:

A lot of people may not understand why I like my favorite local team as much as my own team, but I always get excited whenever 2415 does well. Ever since I first saw their 2011 bot that completely dominated in 3 regionals and did well at championships, I've been a big fan of their team and machines.

My favorite moment of the season was watching 2415 seeding 1st on the Archimedes division and making it to the division finals, and their alliance even pushed it to a rubber match. It was just awesome to see such an amazing performance by a local team whose performance has inspired many in our area.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

I was extremely excited to see 1477 go all the way this year. It made me happy to see the team we've allianced with often since as far back as 2009, and in 2013 partner up twice, take their opportunity and struggle all the way through a ton of rubber matches to take home the Championship.

I always cheer for any Texas team (I was throwing a fit in the Galileo semifinals because I was like hmm...118 and 1477?) but at the same time, I was glad Texas Torque got the recognition they have because I think people know now there are plenty of great Texas teams beside 148 and 118.

It's just a good feeling when teams around you do well and continue to inspire you to stay in FIRST and do amazing things, I think I'm really lucky to live within 45 minutes of both 1477 and 118.

On a side note...Peachtree was one of my favorite regionals. Full size practice field, really nice venue, and everyone was really nice and helpful, besides being filled with very good teams.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

*cough* 624 *cough*

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Best match: The entirety of the finals on Einstein. That was just a joy to watch.

Best alliance: I liked the Curie champions best, but it's very hard to pick.

Best personal moment: Arriving in St. Louis with 4464, and reflecting on how far we had come despite only forming a few months earlier (the team started in late November). We owe a huge thank-you to all the teams (specifically 836 and 1111) that helped make it possible for us to attend.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Personal Favourite Moment: Smokey mountain Regional, where my team (4265)'s chain broke on our chassis, and 3824 pushed us onto the pyramid, allowing us to climb! It was truly incredible and I think that's what coopertition is all about!

Oh, and a second personal favourite moment: Staying up really late with my team members in Smokey Mountain Regional deciding who to be on an alliance with, and scouting in the Archimedes Scouting Alliance with Team 20! Good times!

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

I think that quarterfinals 1-2 on Galileo were the best. The underdogs triumphed over 1114 and 118. It was Adambots, Hilltoppers and RUSH

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Best moment: Archimedes quarters 2 match 3. We had never made it to elims at worlds. It was a really close match that advanced us. That was a tough division...

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

Gotta say my fave moment is when 1155 accidentally got stuck under the pyramid and ended up pushing the pyramid up like an inch or 2.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

My favorite moment: was the Granite State Regional elimination rounds. 175 (my team) was picked by team 61, and we both picked 172 to finish off the alliance. We managed to finish in the finals, beating out the second and third alliances, finishing in second place behind none other than 610. It was a great day.

Most interesting moment: I think this goes for anyone, seeing 148 climb for the first time. They broke physics.

Re: Best moments of Ultimate Ascent
 

At Lone Star, they broke physics and then physics broke their shooter hehe