To whomever came up with this year's IRI tagline, "Robotic Redemption", I salute you! After St. Louis, where a heinous schedule and a few self-inflicted missteps led to a 5-5 record and missing the eliminations, to come back and put up a much better showing against a MUCH, MUCH better field (seriously - the best colllective group of teams I've ever had the pleasure of competing with!) was true redemption for Team 48. The relative consistency we showed in Tennessee and North Carolina was back, and the new ramp deployment (thanks, 3138!) and minibot we used worked out very well. Fun times.
We were also excited to be selected for the IRI elims (thank you, 548!) - something that hasn't happened since we were an alliance captain in 2007. That was very refreshing. I wished we could have put together a more memorable run, but that wasn't to be.
I am very proud of my team for their showing in the first quarterfinal match, seamlessly switching from defense to offense after 469's gripper broke. If that had to be the last match of the competition we appeared in, I couldn't ask for more out of our drive team's performance.
An alliance captain strategic decision switched up the strategy in the 2nd quarterfinal match - to be clear, 48's robot and team was ready and rarin' to go in the 2nd match if needed - no technical difficulties whatsoever.
Thanks as always to the IRI event planners for one-upping most official events in the organization, execution, and excitement departments. The quality and fun of this event will motivate us to work even harder next year to ensure we are worthy of invitation next season. Keep up the great work!