Chesapeake ... the perfect regional?
 

First off, this Chesapeake Regional was by far the most enjoyable competition I've been to in my 3 years in FIRST.

The refs were very consistent in their calls and were always available if we had a question. I think it helped to have two head refs to share the position. After every match we agreed with the result and spent no time whatsoever wishing to review a call. Thank you very much Steve and Anne!

Ah... the Pit Administration Divas. I have never seen a rendition of the macarena performed with such skill. I know exactly why we were always late to cue. With your chanting of "team 888", you became our cheering section in that half of the building.

This is the 5th year for my team in FIRST and now we were able to spend more time helping other teams with their robots than our own (this made it very difficult as usual to find our mentor). If any teams have questions (1820, I have the final copy of your auto code) feel free to contact me at colehasson@gmail.com . However I can hardly ask for a GP award, the amazing act of GP by teams 175, 1629, and 1184 during finals deserves an award. You guys definitely deserved the win, regardless of the final score. I hope to see you in Atlanta!

Good luck to all teams and thanks to the Chesapeake crew for making this a model competition for other regionals to try and replicate!

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

If anyone has a Regional gallery for Chesapeake set up on their site, link them here.

I didn't take 1 picture this weekend. :ahh:
I especially want a picture of the rock wall in the pits.

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

Though we did not win that elusive regional championship banner, this was a banner regional for team 293. We had our best ever qualification performance, and we were the first pick in alliance selection for the first time ever. Our scouting effort was once again superb (we even ran several "mock drafts" on Friday night before alliance selection), allowing us to build what we felt was the most powerful alliance in the field.

The event was very well run. While I was initially concerned about the officiating regarding robot-robot interaction, the refs kept the flags in the pockets throughout the intense elimination rounds and let the robots and drivers decide the championship on the playing field.

Congrats to the winners, 1629, 175, and 1184. To 1629, I guess it turned out better for you that we declined your offer of alliance. We have no hard feelings towards your team and we hope you have none towards us, but team 103 was #1 on our board and we wanted the higher second round pick.

It was a privilege picking Cybersonics team 103. You are one of the benchmark teams (25 being another) against which we measure our performance. We take great satisfaction when we can beat you, but at Cheasapeake we enjoyed working with you even more. We also thoroughly enjoyed working with team 1389. We were very surprised that you had not yet been picked when we chose you. You remind me of 293 before last season--a small, competitive team that builds good robots. Best of luck to both 103 and 1389 in your competitons in this year and in years to come.

For the scout from 175: who were the top 5 teams in the qualification matches in center goals per game and what were their averages? Thanks!

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

I attended the "Jet-Lag" regional with my team (1524) and I honestly must say, it didn't seem the have the same amount of excitment to it, and I am blaming that on the seating. At Hartford, they placed the bleachers really close to the feild, making it seem like you were really right there, with the setup at Chesepeake, the bleachers were way far away from the playing feild. (well, on the side I was anyways)

Fun bits:
1. Finding out the hard way that Brits spin backwards in the Macerena!
2. Finding out 237 needed a flux capasitor (how do you plan on getting the balls to go 88 mph?!?
3.Playing DDR with 165
4.Drop-kicking people in our Hotel
5.Famous Dave's!
6.Seeing a Team from CT win
7.Don't remember anything else...

Not-so-fun bits:
1. Finding out the hard way that Brits spin backwards in the Macerena
2.Our chain kept on breaking......
3.Our team in the hotel (can you say 'gassy?'haha)
4.The guy with tthe guitar on 007, that just anoyed me.
5.Not really meeting anyone.

I cant remember anything else ATM...

Re: Chesapeake ... the perfect regional?
 

YES!!! The Divas.. lol They rocked! How can anyone forget about them??
A huge thanks to them for announcing every part we needed to help everyone else, and also the use of a photo copier at the end of the day (even though it had some issues :ahh: ), and the "borrowing" of the microphone on Thursday night to have a bit of end of the day fun for the Elvis comment, the BEEEEE-OOOOOOOP, and the helicopter sounds, they were all great sports.

They also were great sports about announcing some rather unusual requests, such as ours, and another teams Flux Capacitor request our Right Sided bit shifter request, our Pinecone request, and also Team 1337's ROFL COPTER request.


:yikes:

From the warm southern welcome on Thursday morning with the classic "Y'all", to the hourly Safety announcements, you could tell they were definately enjoying their jobs this year.

Hope to see you all next year. :)


Oh, we have our secrets. ;)

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

No hard feelings at all. To tell the truth, we breathed easier when we knew we wouldn't have to play your alliance in the finals. You guys were scary good.

Call it following the example of 2train last weekend. Buzz suggested calling our time-out first, and the rest of us agreed wholeheartedly. From a competitive standpoint, it was a tough decision since you guys are so good when you're up and running, but we all agreed we didn't want to win that way. Thanks for the awesome final matches, they were nerve-wracking to say the least.

In the same vein, the GP of the teams we knocked out of the elimination rounds was amazing. Almost every single team came to us and said something along the lines of "Good luck, we'll be cheering for you." It felt awesome to see not only our team and our alliance partners cheering for us during the finals, but several other teams as well. I don't know for sure which were cheering for us and which for our opponents, but that doesn't really matter; all the teams were rooting for everyone to do well. One team I really want to thank is 1727; several of them stood by the curtain near the field the whole time from semis on, encouraging us on the drive team and cheering their heads off. They were the first to congratulate us when we got off the field. Thanks, guys; you have no idea how good it felt to look over and see you rooting for us in between matches.

Re: Chesapeake ... the perfect regional?
 

[quote=Elgin Clock]YES!!! The Divas.. lol They rocked! How can anyone forget about them??
and the helicopter sounds, they were all great sports.


[quote]

The head pit diva-Dr. Spence-as well as being an outstanding dancer, is the first woman to graduate in aerospace engineering from the Univ. of MD, is an expert on helicopter design and an engineering professor. She is our state FLL partner. And I think I've talked her into coming to the Championship! ;)

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

ask and you shall receive...
check out the picture gallery :)

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

Thank you very much. You guys had an excellent robot and I think you were the first choice of every team there.

Well this should make you happy, although I know that it wasn't your goal

By total shots [auton and driver opporated] (we scouted 7 matches for most teams)
293- 9.667
341- 8.286
399- 7.714
1389- 6.143
56- 5.857
with 237, 888, 175, and 1629 very close

By total shots during driver opporated period
56- 5.75
1389- 5.571
399-5.429
888- 5.286
341- 4.857
with 612 and 293 very close

By total auton shots
293- 5.333
341- 3.429
175- 3.2
399- 2.286
237- 2
with 1629 very close

Hope this isn't an information overload, but I am a data nerd. Anyone else who is curious can ask me in the forum or PM me. :)

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

Awesome, Thanks a lot Jenny.
Good things DO come to those who wait it seems.

I just have one question. What kind of equipment did you use for scouting? Was it all paper/pens, or computers, or some other kind of data collection means?

Congratulations on the win, and hope to see the big smiling faces (especially after this win) at the Championship Event in Atlanta.

Also, Thanks to BUZZ as well for the use of some tools while we were helping get some rookies in the game on Thursday and Friday morning.

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

We were using 8 team members at any given time on Friday and Saturday morning. (this is possible for most teams willing to commit to it, we have only 18 students, so we are not a large team) 6 of the students filled out papers with the required information on them. (Shots scored in auton, shots scored in human controlled portion of the match, ditto for lower, 1-10 rank on defense ability, and whether or not the team made it up onto the ramp) The sheets were than handed to someone with a PDA who put the data into a spreadsheet. The spread sheet then computed total shots scored, total lower goal scored, total match score, total auton score, and total human controlled score for each match and took the average of everything. The 8th person took the papers in and out of the file box (we had a file on each team) this was a much bigger job than it sounds like. We scouted every match and every team (even our own) until the end of the day Saturday when we stopped to make decisions. We also had a student whose job it was to keep a DQ list and keep track of how often the alliance that won auton won the match. It was a lot of work. I have freshman who scouted 57 matches on Saturday. One student didn't take a break for a single match. My idea of taking a break was asking another student to shuffle papers while I did regular scouting. On Saturday we made a top 30 list and the coach and I watched those more carefully while the regular scouting continued.

We also did pit scouting on Thursday, but that is probably not much different than most teams.

We have used a quantitative/spreadsheet format for two years now. (A spreadsheet help to pick our division winning alliance last year at Championships.) The quantitative scouting is really telling. Many times you think that a team is performing really well but they actually aren't performing as well as other teams, they are just more noticeable.

You are always welcome to any tools we have. You're efforts to help all the other teams at this regional were impressive an inspiring. You really exemplified the meaning of FIRST. I was also impressed with you're robot both here and at UTC.

Thank you for the congratulations, we will definitely be at Championships (we would have even had we not won the regional because of our Chairman's award) See you there. :) :) :)

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

Team 612 attended the Chesapeake Regional for the first time, and we had LOTS of fun.
Thanks to all 64 teams... we all had a great time with all of you.
Thanks to all the volunteers..........this was not possible without every single one of you.
Also thanks to the Divas..........you guys were AWESOME!

Finally congrats to every single one out there who attended this regional. You all are the winners, and i haven't seen this much gracious professionalism during any other competition.

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

Thanks to everyone that worked so hard at Chesapeake!

Especially Mike Wade, Jenny Beatty, Carol Kauffman, Rob Taminelli, Greg Needel, Jess Jankowitz, Steve Shade, Anne Bergeron, Lucinda Crabtree, Jeff Seaton, and the list goes on and on....

We have been to all 4 years of the Chesapeake Regional and would not miss it for the world. See everyone in Philly or Atlanta.

Its Game Time!! :D

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

We have always considered Spike to be a quality team and were honored that you picked us, we are humbled by your remarks and hope to see you in some of the off season events, We do have some unfinished business to take care!!

Re: 2006 Chesapeake Regional
 

Hopefully I can encourage my team to compete in Monty Madness, I guess it all depends on what the rest of the team wants to do.
I came to Chesapeake during my Spring Break to mentor my team and I had a lot of fun. I was really impressed by our drivers and our scouting operation which did a great job. What really impressed me was how fast we fixed our robot after the third quarterfinal match. During that match our infamous net had two poles completely sheered off. We only had 6 minutes to repair our damaged net and we still managed to fix it, mad props to 103 and our pit crew for fixing it so fast. Unfortunantly we were in such a rush to get back on the field we did not replace our battery so our battery died midway through the first semi-final which was dissapoting becasue we could have shot a full clip of balls:(
Oh well, I was very proud of my team, and I am glad to see they have carried on the traditions from last years team, I am proud to be an alumni and mentor of this team.

Hopefully they can go to Nats, becasue in my opinion this is the best robot our team has built, it would be a shame for it not to go to Nats.

Good luck to all and congrats to the winning alliance on a come from behin victory.

-Spikey