Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

2108 is registered and is excited.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

the turtles are coming, the Turtles are coming! :-)

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I cant wait , its gonna be much better ...

hopefully 540 wont go against one of the same teams every single match this year , because its a week 2 regional

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

i think FIRST changed the algorithm they used for pairing midway through the season to cut back on that same thing from happening.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Team 1731 will be there. We're disappointed that the team from Canada won't be there, but we're excited about meeting the team from Hawaii. Glad you're coming to visit us on the East Coast! None of this is to say that you local guys are boring or anything... we enjoy seeing you too :]. See you all in a couple weeks!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

If you go into Canadian withdrawal, there will be two genuine Canadians in the team 587 pit that you can talk to :).

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

We have 8 girls on our team of 20 students and they just went to Walmart to pick up some hula skirts as part of their uniform. Yes, they sell those kinds of things at Walmart in Hawaii and tons of pool noodles for the beaches. We never have issues finding supplies for our bumpers. :D
I told them to practice a Hawaiian song, since in NJ, they put us on the spot and asked us to sing our Hawaii anthem. Only 3 of our team members actually knew it. Pretty embarassing because I forgot it too.
We are very excited and cant wait to meet you all.
Its a lot to pack and plan for since we head to DC afterwards and participate in the Chesapeake regional too. Our students are missing the last 2 weeks of school, then come back to a 2 week spring break vacation. But of course, we have the Hawaii regional then.
Virginia, here we come!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

So....
VCU is here!

I've been watching some of the webcast today, and here are my thoughts.

-There isn't much hurdling. It appears to me that about half (maybe less) of the teams try to hurdle at all. This is causing the average score to be 20-40. (im guessing) There are some teams who are getting as many as three hurdles per match. Kudos to you guys.
-There are a lot of penalties. 2-4 seems to be an average amount of penalties per match. It sometimes makes the score 0. Its disappointing to see penalties deciding the match results so often.
-the time between the matches is long. It seems to be taking the refs longer to decide on the score. I'm not trying to downplay the refs, just making an observation. There also seems to be more problems with the field.
-why are they playing Hannah Montana?

The only regionals I have seen this year are BAE-NH and a little bit of the midwest. So maybe all these observations are normal, and NH and midwest were abnormal. I guess we'll see in the coming weeks...

My two cents.
DB

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Because it is crazy infectious. :D

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Lets not talk infectious and VCU in the same sentence.... :o

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Didn't get a chance to watch any of the matches today... will be glued to the lappy tomorrow.
Sad to hear the scores are so low and people still having problems with the penalties. I hope this works itself out in the next few weeks.
Looking at the teams I'm glad to see the great state of North Carolina is well represented. :) Good luck to 435,587,900,2108,2483, & 2642.
Would love to see an all NC alliance winning :cool:

One thing I have noticed that slightly disappoints me... not a criticism...
The majority of the teams are from VA or NC.
Would be nice seeing teams from some of the other states. Maybe this just the way it is at a regional.

Have fun kids, wish I could join yous up there!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

While there's still a ton of penalties, our last match of Friday did break the low score streak. 1731, 1598, and 1541 scored 102 points in a great team effort.
And while a majority of teams are from VA/NC, we do have 359 venturing out from Hawai'i. In previous years 843 was a regular visitor from Canada, and 383 from Brazil. We always seem to attract a few out of town-ers to our awesome event.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Yes Jeff, no more infections.

And the time between matches is usually not a ref problem, but the new teams coming onto the field taking too long to get set up (no power/leaving field then coming back). The matches were scheduled to be five minutes from the start of one match to the start of the next match; most of the afternoon we were able to reset and stay on that five minute interval.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

yeah i will second the whole not needing arms thing..... ours like suck out loud as of the end of friday night... honestly we learned that we could heard and run laps better if we jus kept the stupid things tied down...

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

A couple HDRIs (High Dynamic Range Images) of the NASA/VCU Regional. Made up of 12 or 13 images each, all taken today over the course of several minutes.