Re: New Competition! Bear Brawl 2008
 

Mechanical Mayhem, Team 1519, would like to say a big THANKS to all the people that were involved in the planning, organizing, setup, refereeing, field reset, pit admin, and all the other aspects of this event!

This was a great inaugural event, with a tremendous amount of potential to grow into a major fall event! The location was excellent, with Western New England College hosting the entire event in a large gym allowing for everything to be in the one big room, including the registration, pits, field, and stands.

Despite some initial troubles with the field before the first match, the event crew did a fantastic job keeping the matches moving along, while being polite and helpful to teams. Refereeing was fair and consistent resulting in all teams being content with the officiating, as far as we could tell.

We were impressed by a number of robots that we had not yet seen in the tournaments we had attended this year, including Rosie Robotics (839) regularly running 3-4 lines in autonomous mode and doing a great job running laps for a full-size robot, and Rage (173) with a herder with an extremely effective ball-dislodging mechanism.

The 2-on-2 format was a fun twist on the "Overdrive" game, making it easier for hurdling teams to get access to a ball (no ball contention) and easier for teams to run laps, since there were less robots to potentially cause traffic jams. Our "Speed Racer" really enjoyed the less crowded track, regularly turning 12-14 laps in teleop mode and 6 to 8 lines in autonomous. (Our best match of the day was 8 lines in auto with 15 laps.)

For the elimination rounds, all of the teams at the tournament participated on an alliance. The draft was done in serpentine fashion, with the requirement that alliance captains pick outside of the "alliance captain" teams in order to prevent powerhouse alliances. (We think this is a great idea for small tournaments where all teams can be on alliances for the elimination rounds.)

The alliances were of three teams, with only two of the teams competing at a time in 2-on-2 format. Alliances were required to mix in all three robots in the first two matches of the "best of 3" elimination rounds. The #1 seeded alliance only had two robots, meaning they didn't need to mix in a third robot, but leaving them with no backup in case of mechanical failure.

Alliances were as follows:

1. 1519, 173
2. 839, 1027, 176-B
3. 228, 176, 2523
4. 237, 173-B, 238

The awards:

• Number 1 Seed: 1519
• Play of the Day: 173 - Regular dislodging of the ball and catching it on the way down!
• Referee Award: 839 - For Gracious Professionalism in helping another team rebuild their robot!
• Team Spirit: 237
• Human Player Competition: A pair of players from 228 and 1027 teamed up to win this award!
• High Scoring Average: 1519
• Event Finalists: 228, 176, 2523
• Event Winners: 1519, 173

An interesting thing to note about the winning alliance is that it was composed of a lap-bot and a herder -- that's right, they couldn't hurdle or place a ball! (Thanks, 173, for being a great alliance partner, and possibly helping us make Overdrive history as the first non-hurdling alliance to win an event!)

We had a great time at the tournament and will try to encourage more NH teams to make the trek down to Springfield for next year!

The only suggestions we'd have for improving this event for next year would be to make the pit areas a little bit larger than the standard 10x10 since there was plenty of room to have the pits be a little larger, and to provide a separate electrical circuit for every few pit areas (the pits had all been on a single circuit with long extension cords, causing too much voltage drop for teams to charge batteries until quite a few teams moved their battery charging stations to other areas of the gym.)

Thanks again, Scott, and all of the other event hosts for putting on a fun, relaxed, exciting event! You can count on us to return again next year!

PS: We'll try to get some photos online within the next few days.

Re: New Competition! Bear Brawl 2008
 

Congratulations to 1519 and 173 on a very convincing victory. They were the class of the competition Saturday.

It will be interesting to see who can still hurdle at Bash next week. I know we are suffering from wear and tear on that function and it looked like the other bots that had hurdled at Regionals were having similar difficulties. Our alliance tried to be lap bots in the finals, but you can't beat 1519's little lapper at their own game :)

To quote one of our engineering mentors: "It's a very BIG ball"

Re: New Competition! Bear Brawl 2008
 

Bear Brawl was a blast. Two on two worked for us since we were laying on our backs for a good portion of the event. Thanks to all the teams for not running us over.

FIRST Overdrive really took a toll on the robots this year. There were a lot of "tired" bots at WENC.

Re: New Competition! Bear Brawl 2008
 

This came at an excellent time in the off-season -- to show the new people (students as well as adults) the end of the process really is as exciting as everyone says it is, before they get into the grind of the build season. How that six weeks (and pre-build preparation) makes it all worth while. I'm coming back next year, maybe even with a team and a robot.

After helping with the field reset/robot wrangling aspect, I've devised a new game for those of a mechanical mind. I picked up more things between matches, enough for a "name that part" game. I have to make special note that there were no ones and zeros left on the field -- programmers know how to keep their programs stuck together! :cool:

I agree, John. There was one match towards the end that three of the four robots just stopped at least 15-20 seconds before the end of the match, and the fourth was limping along. Maybe it was the batteries, but it is a tiring game.

Re: New Competition! Bear Brawl 2008
 

Team 228 would like to thank teams 176 and 2523 for giving it their all to make it to the finals. Congratulations to teams 1519 and 173 on their victory. It's hard to compete with 1519's rabbit robot and 173 is always a tough team to beat.

We'd really like to thank Scott and everyone from Western New England College for holding this event. WNEC has a beautiful facility for this event and I'm sure it will only get better in future years. Thanks to all the volunteers who kept the event exciting all day.

By far, one of the greatest assets FIRST has is its group of dedicated volunteers. :cool:

See everyone at Bash!

Re: New Competition! Bear Brawl 2008
 

Thank you everyone for the kind words. THis was my first time planning an off-season event and it certainly was a learning experience. We are going to be meeting net week as a group to determine what needs to be changed around for next year, but I think a lot of the key elements were in place. There was a lack in power, but that was a miscommunication between myself and the electrician here at the school. We will make sure that anything that went wrong will be changed and ready to go for net year! I would like to thank EVERYONE for coming out and enjoying the day. I had a good time all day and it certainly was worth every second I took setting it all up to see the smiles and roars of the crowd throughout the day. I will try to post some of my own pictures later and if anyone has picture that they would like to send me I would love to take them. Thanks all!

Re: New Competition! Bear Brawl 2008
 

RAGE had a great time at the inaugural Bear Brawl. It was a busy day running two robots, but well worth it.
Thanks to all the volunteers for running a great event. Of course, Scott. Job well done.
Thanks to 1519 for picking us. It was great playing with you guys as always.
Also, thanks to 237 and 238 for playing with us as well.

Re: New Competition! Bear Brawl 2008
 

Thank you to all who attended the NEMO session - it was a little different than our usual conversations! Thank you, Scott and crew, for putting on the event. And thanks go out to all the alums and mentors who spoke with our new Regional Director Sue Glasspiegel. I know she appreciated it!