2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Finger Lakes is fast approaching yet again! Not surprising this event filled up once again being one of the most competitive and exciting regionals. Many strong teams will be returning again this year as well as some rookie teams and those looking for their first win. With such a unique game this year the blue banner is really up for grabs and should be quite interesting. So who's ready for 2015 FLR?

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

We won't be going again this year unfortunately but I'm excited to finally see 4039 in action!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

5030 is excited to be able to compete at FLR this year, good luck to everyone competing before it and can't wait to go to Rochester.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

We'll file that under things not often heard ;)

Can't wait for FLR!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

We're excited to be coming to Finger Lakes for the first time! We've had a great time with Rochester-area teams for the past two years at Rah-Cha-Cha Ruckus (a top-notch event, might I add) and are thrilled to be coming down again for an actual regional. ROY G BIV and the team will see you all in a few weeks!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

The Arctic Warriors are looking forward to another great Finger Lakes Regional!

Can't wait to see some good friends and meet some new ones.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

I hope everybody's ready for the FLR! Good luck to all!

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Team 3044 just finished the Tech Valley regional and we're pumped to head to the Finger Lakes!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Just a quick note to teams coming to FLR from out of town. The X-Cats have put together a PDF list of restaurants near RIT, for you to use.

You (or your travel mentors) can find it at http://www.x-cats.org/2015/Restaurants2015web.pdf

See you all this weekend,

Lisa

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Does anyone know when the pit map will become available or will we find out at competition?

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Good luck! It's almost time!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Love the list, very helpful guide for all teams. You forgot Nick Tahou's though! Get some garbage plates while you're visiting Rochester!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Not sure if I'd willingly send visiting teams in that neighborhood (at least not after dark).

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Didn't think about that. Don't go here after dark but it is a great place to grab some take out garbage plates for lunch! I think 229 did this one year.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

As a Rookie in the Robotics world, I am really excited to meet all, if not most of the teams there in the pit. If not at the pit, then probably near the stands.

See you all tomorrow (or in 9 hours)!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Not to complain but is anyone else getting a ton of ads on the webcast? It seems like every other match I have an add pop up that I have to watch.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Watching from VA clear here no ads after initial.
They are on lunch now. some good bots, who you watching?

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Been enjoying 340, 1126, 5254 (crazy good for such a new team), and ROY G BIV. 340's auto routine is interesting. It appears as if they sort of jerk the cans at first so as to keep hold of it if contested, then they drive away with it. Could be doing that for some other reason, but it looked that way to me.

That said, I've only been glancing at the stream during work. Haven't given it a proper watch.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

We jostle the robot to make sure the hooks are in the cans before we pull away. Thanks for the recognition!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Congratulations to the Regional Champions: 4039, 3015, and 378; 4039 for their Regional Chairman's Award, as well as 3015 for their Engineering Inspiration Award

4039: You are by far one of my favorite teams in FIRST, with branding second to none and simple, but extremely effective robots year after year. Your program is an inspiration to anyone who encounters it. Good luck at the championship event!

3015: Your robots are always fantastic, but seem to come up short of a regional win every year. This time you finally got it, and watching you and 4039 make stacks on stacks from the 7 seed was incredible.

378: Congrats on your second consecutive Finger Lakes Regional Championship! Your can stealing ability was fantastic, and probably one of the many reasons your alliance came up 3 points ahead when it counted.

The finalist alliance of 5254, 340, and 174 was fantastic as well.

5254 is another one of my favorite teams, and watching you sit atop the rankings for the whole event after being a sleeper pick at TVR was awesome. Your consistency at putting up 2+ stacks every match was beautiful.
I think I speak for all of 20 when I say we're ecstatic we get to see you at the championship event this year!

340's robot is incredible this year. Their capping abilities with containers in multiple orientations allowed your alliance to sometimes make that elusive 5th high stack. Congratulations on your 2nd finals appearance in as many regionals.

174 was the perfect 3rd robot for the 1st seed because of their interesting ability to right fallen containers. Their container grabber from the center also came in clutch during their battles with 378.

20 unfortunately had some failures Saturday morning that tanked our average score in three consecutive matches, but we were happy to play on an interesting alliance with 578 and 3173. 578 and 3173 had quite the synergy with how they played their feeder and landfill game together that was cool to see. I think with a little more polish we could have done pretty well for ourselves.

Another exciting Finger Lakes Regional in the books. See you all next year!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

We were very excited to get registered for Finger Lakes about 3 weeks before the event. So many teams were welcoming and so helpful.
We wanna thank 20 for having a few members and mentors come by when our gearbox had issue and helped us fix an issue we never could imagine occurring by us putting a better newer part in our robot.

340 had invited us out to eat Thursday night to show us what delights Rochester has to offer known as garbage plates. Then were mind enough to have us come back to their school Friday night for home made meal as well as share some scouting and help us with our alliance selection seeing as we lack in the field of scouting. They also had members come by and help out with fixing us and offering ideas to better our strategy and what we may my notice while they were an eye in the sky so to speak. Their gracious professionalism award was well deserved and we were sad to be partially broken the one time we got to play with them.

1511 were awesome alliance members to work with same with 191, honesty being able to grab both of them while being 4th seed, 3rd alliance is great.

5254 was awesome to share a pit with and we would work with each other helping maximize both of our bots. We helped them build their initial ramp and they help us realize how to maximize time to get 2 full stack when we weren't broken.
We hope to come back to Finger Lakes again and good luck to those going to St.Louis!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

I was in Hartford today and wanted to watch this.
Perusing the results.
#7 seed won?
3 Finals, the last one by 3 points?
401 to 403 for total score?
4039 = RCA & Winner?

Whoa!

Definitely on my to watch list.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

MakeShift is a great, well rounded team that certainly deserves to have done well. Don't be fooled by the alliance number, they were the strongest robot at the competition imo. Also, it should shock no one that 4039 was doing well with their robot. ROY G BIV certainly had potential and I was sure they would improve from their performance at Waterloo. Also they were one of the best cyclers of 2013 and one of the best finishers of 2014; they build great robots but go under the radar because of all of the hype around 1114-2056. Congrats on the Chairman's Award and good luck at the Championship!

Here are links to the suspenseful finals matches. 1511 has the matches recorded and we will work to get them up asap.

Finals 1

Finals 2

Finals 3

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Thank you for posting these. Wow! Why I do FIRST.

Here is MakeShift's crate:

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

1126 was proud to work with 1507 and 3838 to achieve the finger lakes record of 196 points, even though it wasn't enough to get us to finals we were all amazed of what these robots and field teams could acomplish.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Despite all of the incredible stackers at this event, I think my favorite part of the competition was the 2nd pick robots in the finals swashbuckling at center stage for possession of the remaining Recycle Containers.

In finals match 2 where 378 started to pull away with one for blue but 174 hooked last second to deny them the grab was akin to last years finals when 1507 used 378 as a hard stop to shoot the 40pt high goal.

FLR finals always delivers.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Did anyone post video of Eric Eckhardt's interpretive dance somewhere? A keeper for sure!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

My team's RC puller does essentially the same jerking motion in autonomous, and it is to ensure the pullers make their way into the top of the RC. Sometimes ours miss by a few inches, but with the drivetrain motion before they pull our reliability has increased.

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Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

How the dance was preformed we for sure thought it was 3003 who had won. For 1507 i feel they should have lifted the cans and pulled them around.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

As always, Finger Lakes was an amazing event. The kinds of score we saw in most qualification rounds was outstanding. We may not have had any clear powerhouses like 1114 or 148 or whohaveyou but there was no shortage of high-tier teams, and the top 8 was constantly shuffling. I don't think anyone had solid predictions throughout the event of who would end up on top.

Congrats to 4039, 3015 and 378 for the event win, and to 5254, 340 and 174 for some hard-fought finals. But double congratulations to all of them since we have an interesting circumstance where all teams in the finals are qualified for worlds, thanks to 4039's Chairman's win and 340's pre-qualification from Tech Valley! For a finals that was decided by 3 points, I don't think there is a more fitting way for an event to go down.

Personal congratulations to my alma mater, 1126. I thought 1126 had this event on lock after watching them put up 3 six stacks in one of their last qual matches. In the end, the firepower just wasn't enough and a bad first semifinals match ended their run. Nevertheless, I've never seen a team more prideful in defeat. Ending the competition by killing the regional record (which they help set) is a better way to go out than anything I could hope for. I thank them for helping us all the way through the event and bonding with members of my team as the event went on. We've had a tight partnership this season and I would love to see it continue to go strong. Go SparX!

To say that my team is unsatisfied with our performance is an understatement. But there is always next time, and a whole year remains to improve. FLR 2016 can't come soon enough!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Well I guess now that the dust has settled and the emotions have worn off a bit, now is a good time to throw this here.
First off I want to thank our Alliance partners 340 and 174. You guys were a pleasure to work with and were everything we hoped for out of an alliance. I wish we could have won with you guys but unfortunately it didn't work out that way. For anyone wondering, we think the reason we had trouble keeping the recycling cans on the totes in the last match was because in the second finals match when our stack got knocked over it landed on one of our can stabilizers. The stabilizer wasn't mounted very sturdy so the falling totes shifted it. This translated to that stabilizer poking the can off the stack when we tried to lift past a certain height.
Now onto more thanks stuff. I'd like to thank 3015 for 2 things. First things first, thanks for making me look like an idiot. When you guys won ei I jumped from my seat and yelled because I knew that generated us a wild card slot but nobody else on my team knew that yet so they all looked at me confused. :D. Secondly thanks for being so nice as to come to our pit to congratulate us on finalists. You guys were humble and definitely a deserving team. We hope to see you again in St Louis.
Next I want to give a huge shout out to 4039. You guys were truly a class act and exemplify everything FIRST strives for. Not only did you build am excellent robot but you helped your community enough to win chairman's
Truly a well rounded team. Even more than that, you guys were incredibly nice to us the whole event and were super pleasant to talk to. The award you presented to us at the end of the competition helped boost our morale more than you can imagine and you guys seemed genuinely happy to present it to us. We were a bit down in the dump because we fell just short of the finish line but you guys were so understanding and nice. I'm not sure if it was how great people you were or how colorful your shirts were but talking to you guys as we were packing up our pit put a smile on my fave. I can't even think of accurate words to describe just how great of a team of people you guys are but know that your graciousness did not go unappreciated.
Lastly I want to thank everyone who made this event run smoothly. 5254 has nothing but positive things to say about this regional.
I guess I'll throw a mini shout out here to the drive coach of 5030 for being a cool dude to talk to as well as the mentor from grapes of wrath who told us all about the wonders of rivnuts :)

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Alrighty. I haven’t said anything on Chief in a while but there are a few things about this past weekend that I feel need to be said.

First, I would like to acknowledge all of the hard work by the judges (and their impressive dancing skills). I was a Judge Assistant and some of the amazing things said about so many teams are truly incredible (some of which I already knew). If your team did not win an award, you still have a heck of a lot to be proud of because some of the discussions were pretty intense. I hadn’t really seen that perspective before.

Next, of course, congratulations to the winning alliance as well as Makeshift for their “double-win.” You guys truly have a special program going on and I wish you all of the best. It really is a neat case that every robot in the finals gets a ticket to champs. As much as I still have mixed feelings about this game, both alliances were impressive to watch.

Lastly, I need to give a shout-out to 1126 because, well, I’m a bit biased. I may not be able to put it as eloquently as a good friend of mine just a short scroll up the page but I agree with him 100%. You guys were ready to go on Thursday and functioned like a well-oiled machine…while working on a well-oiled machine. It was really neat to talk to some of the newer members and see that the flame is far from extinguished. I couldn’t watch matches on Friday, but I got score updates and I was texting Dylan throughout the day. Even after some exciting scores, every response was followed with “could be better.” This isn’t terribly surprising, but I’m happy to see that the drive for continual improvement is still ever-present – and you guys did just that. Saturday brought some excellent matches (and high scores!!) that you should all be proud of. You made your way to the 2nd seed alliance captain and picked a stellar combination that would have been playing in the finals in any other year. You gave every eliminations match your best shot, even after an unfortunate mishap in the semis. In true SparX fashion, you put up a fight to the end and showed everyone that you were out, but by no means down. Some of the plays I watched you guys make are things I would expect from a veteran Drive Team, and the four of you conducted yourself like pros. It was truly a pleasure catching up with people and meeting some new ones. The team may have had a few hiccups while I was a student, but the past few years have shown me that you have come back fighting. I truly wish each and every one of you the best.

I haven’t paid much attention to this year, but I truly had an exciting weekend. FLR is always such a high-quality event and this year was no exception. Hope to see you all next year (or, shameless plug time, at Ruckus, which will be on 10/17 at the Main Street Armory in Rochester).

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

378 would like to thank 4039 and 3015 for inviting us to join their alliance. Both are great teams and we had a fantastic time!!! Congratulations to 4039 on their Chairman's and to 3015 for the Engineering Inspiration and Woodie Flowers!! I graduated from SUNY Brockport and worked in Spencerport during college.

The finals were a bit stressful given our controller and arm deployment issues, but it worked out in the end (3 pts!!) with all 6 teams going to Champs!!! The last couple of years, we've been the 3rd robot with enough uniqueness to be beneficial to the winning alliance. Last year with 1507 and 20 we had the 1507 ball hand off and the back stop. This year, we had the first "noodle quiver" (an idea from 4039) and the can battles with 174. We never imagined we would be part of the winning alliance 2 years in a row!!

We've also had very good experiences with our neighbors in Canada. We won the 2014 Ruckus with 610 and 1241. We then went to GTRE (Oshawa) for our first 2015 regional and finished 5th with 1815. We played with 2056/2852 and as the #8 seed were opposite of them in the quarters when they put up 210! 1114/2056/4039/610/2852/etc are all going to St. Louis and the can wars are going to be crazy!! 340 and 1511 have great auto can snatchers and they are going to be a huge asset at Champs.

We had a blast and are very grateful for the opportunity to compete with some very high performing teams. This is my 4th season as the coach/mentor for 378 and I'm always amazed with the robots at FLR from the top to the bottom!!! We had 340 on our right and 1507/1511 across from us in the pits. Then 191, 1405, 20, 174, 578 in the same short stretch of pits just down from us. It's amazing how we walk around the pits and see so many high quality teams year after year.

See everyone in a few weeks!!!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

MakeShift would like to thank all those who put together the Finger Lakes Regional. This was our first time attending and we found it to be very well organized, a beautiful venue and a welcoming atmosphere.

The level of competition at RIT was impressive and 5254 set the standard from start to finish. As our 2015 Boost Award Winner we can't wait to see you shine at World's. 340's world class can-burglar and impressive stacking made for a potent combination. 174 was a great pick as a third robot with their amazing can-righting mechanism.

With the quality of machines and driving from 1126, 1507, 2228, 3003, 1405 and so many others, putting up stack after stack in qual's and then playoffs, we needed a lot of luck to make it to the finals.

Our sincere thanks to our underdog 7th seed alliance partners and newest FRC friends. In a year sometimes dominated by one or two robots, the three of us proved to be stronger together than each of us as individuals. It was a true pleasure to work with 3015 - from strategy to robot, you guys are one solid team. 378 was the key to our alliance, contributing timely RC's and just enough landfill totes. We loved sharing a moment of #teamquiver with you!

With only a three point difference in the deciding match it could definitely have gone either way. We were so pleased that, as it turned out in the end, all six teams in the finals earn an invite to St. Louis.

Finally, to be recognized with Chairman's amongst such storied teams was truly an honour. This touched us deeply and we will do our best going forward to live up to this title. One note for teams that are striving for this award but were disappointed this year - we know how it feels to work so hard and not be recognized but please, please, please keep striving. Keep working at all those things that spread the message of FIRST and inspire our future leaders - award or not, it's the right thing to do.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

The Finger Lakes Regional was once again an outstanding event. Thanks to all the volunteers that make the event what it is. Also a huge thanks to 4039 MakeShift For picking us and 378 for being awesome alliance partners, it was great to see our alliance MakeShift happen. 5254, 340, and 147 played a great elimination tournament, and especially great in the finals.

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

The Arctic Warriors had a wonderful 2015 Finger Lakes Regional Competition. We consider FLR to be our home regional and it did not disappoint. Thank you to Team 5254 and Team 340 for choosing us to be part of your alliance. It was so cool to make a new friend in the coach from 5254 and work with some old friends from 340. We had a blast showing our abilities with you guys and making it into the finals.

A special congratulations to Dante from Team 1126 for winning Volunteer of the Year. You have been such a great head ref over many years and a great friend to me.

Looking forward to next year!

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

Any word on why Rookie All-Star was not handed out?

Re: 2015 Finger Lakes Regional
 

For anyone who wants to relive any of the matches from the Finger Lakes Regional, all quals and elims matches have been posted on 1511's Match Video Channel. A spreadsheet of all of the matches and the corresponding URLs can be found here.