[RoboTigers1796]

Originally Posted by jblay

Crazy how good 1796 got after not even making eliminations at NYC. We saw their potential at NYC, but they just didn't have it all together yet, was really awesome to see that they put things together and where playing to that potential. Also a shout out to 369 who was awesome at both NYC and from what I saw of SBPLI, real shame they won't be at champs, I think 369 really stepped it up this year and made an awesome machine and in my opinion their best ever.

NYC was very... frustrating for us to say the least. Qualifications 1-8 were horrible with sporadic motions by the robot, left side drive randomly dropping out, and autonomous woes. When we finally diagnosed it down to a bad Anderson power pole quick connect crimp to a drive motor, pneumatic trouble, along with some serious programming clean-up we were all set to strut our stuff in our last qualification match (a replay of a previous match) and show we were worthy of being picked. Fate said otherwise; as soon as Qual 7 rematch started auto started our shooter feeder arm snapped off with the attempt to shoot our first auto disc.
At that point we knew it was impossible to get a pick as our consistency was deplorable even though just a new aluminum tube kept us from running almost 100%. We easily replaced the arm with our back-up but with no more matches to play all we could do was pack up.
We went home with a lot of lessons learned and an itch to get our bot performing the way it should. We entered SBPLI with some upgraded code and drivers that relentlessly practiced on our skeleton-drive bot( simplified AM frame with same drive-train as our comp bot). SBPLI most definitely wasn't a flawless performance but it was relieving to see her work the way we expected her to since NY.

JBlay, thanks for noticing us in ny and even motivating us to get her working for NY by coming up to us and telling us 694 was interested in picking us if we got our stuff together for our last match (clearly we didn't in time). It really gave the students(and the mentors) a push to try to get it working by our 7th qual replay(due to field fault) knowing that teams were still looking at us.
SBPLI is always an enjoyable regional and we thank all the teams there for helping with our random parts and tool requests. It most definitely wasn't a smooth road to the finals but our awesome alliance 358 and 3171 really helped us pull it out (we were ecstatic to see both of you were still available for our two picks as you both were at the top of our list) . We played some really tough alliances but the seamless communication and tweaks made as an alliance I think is what pulled us through. Our opponents were fierce contenders and we were never confident knew who won a match until the scores went up. Thanks to the LI teams around us in the pits who made it possible and I think this season summarized a great lesson for our students that resiliency and constant persistence pays off. 1796 looks forward to seeing our alliance, and everyone else at St. Louis. I'm pretty sure we will be bus-ing it so if anyone needs anything please don't hesitate to PM me.