[Kevin Kolodziej]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

I thought the game was great, up until the finals at IRI, when we had an entanglement issue, and the alliance of 71, 111, and 93 was disqualified.

Andy B.

Man, I hate it when that happens!!

Thanks for pointing me out, Al! Can't believe that was nearly 10 years ago already!

I agree with Cory though. Some of my all-time favorite robots came from that game. I ran into one of the mentors from Rage just a few weeks ago at IRI and he shared a fun story: 173 was the #1 seed in the division. We (71) were somewhere in the middle of the pack, as we always were that year, as the robot was not designed to score well - just win (and back then, rankings were based on points, not w/l records...we would intentionally restrict one of the arms from extending and purposely grab only 2 of the three goals to help with the ranking situation during qualifying). Some members of 173 didn't want to play with us, but others argued that they'd rather play with us than against us, and that's why they ended up picking us. We literally marched through the finals onto Einstein and then in Finals match 2, SPAM 180 beat us to the goals and pushed us back into the barrier and we ended up bending an axle. We sat out for finals match 3 and 173 went out and proved why they were the #1 seed with one of the best ball harvesters I've ever seen. It was so awesome to see an alliance have that kind of diversity. 66 was the third robot and was vital to both game plans - they would help us stay on track when we'd grab all three goals and when 173 was out, they would play some exceptional defense. Oh..and they had the best of the best of the mini-bots too!

Ah, the good old days...