[Koko Ed]

The thing that has always stood out for me about the Elites is not just the things they build (plenty of non Elites used roller claws and were not nearly as effective last year) but how efficiently they use their time on the field of play. 2 minutes is a very short time and one of the most frustrating things I notice is when a team spends one minute of time doing something as trivial as acquiring a single game piece (I actually saw a team spend one whole minute trying to do just that last year trying to grab a tube from a human player during a match. I can understand doing something like that during a practice match but during a qualification match I would have benched the whole drives team for that) It's like everything is on a schedule and they make sure they are in position to meet that schedule every time.
The relentless pursuit of perfection does not simply come from designing "Killer Apps" as Ellery Wong on my team would call them but then too hone and perfect the proper use of them (if you gave the use of any of the Elites robots to any old team in FIRST it would be a decent robot than a dominant one because they wouldn't know how to properly use it to its fullest potential. They would not use the best strategies. They would not know how to get the most out of their alliance partners. They would not keep their plans on time because second tier teams just do not understand those things and it shows through every aspect of their team compared to an Elite. Like Dean says it's not just about the robot. 67 is a dominant team not just because they build terrific robots with Killer Apps. Not just because they have an adult coach, not just because they have great scouting and strategies, not just because they have great sponsors or school support or supportive parents or dedicated students. It's because they pursue and expect success in what they do.
When I look and see the (far too many) teams who are the antitheses of that the first thing that always sticks out to me is the severe lack of urgency to anything they do. The chronic apathy they bring to the table. Never mind if they win or lose it's disturbing how readily they accept missing matches or doing embarrassingly incompetent thing on the field as if it was the whole point of coming out there in the first place.
The Mids see what the Elites are doing and do some of it well but to make it to the Elite level have to take an honest account of themselves and shore up whatever is lacking and many Mids have grown to become Elite over the years because of this.
Too many teams get bent out of shape by the presence of Elites because they are perceived as "pushy and mean". Type A's always come off as that but they have a pretty good idea what is needed to be done to win the match and are just trying to get the other teams on board with what to do. It's natural to resist people telling us what to do. We're independent creatures by nature it's perceived as weak to allow others to tell us what to do but if I have a large group of killers trying to break into my house to slaughter me and my family and Chuck Norris shows up at the back door I aint telling the guy "I got this." I might want to listen to the opinion of the team with all the blue banners on the matter.