[Abhishek R]

Ultimate Ascent was my first year driving, and I was sophomore (I was 14 at the time). I tried out earlier in the Rebound Rumble offseason, but wasn't selected (depth perception too hard, just kidding). At the time of driver tryouts, I never expected to be chosen at all, so I had already been brainstorming ideas for scouting and memorizing team names and numbers.

The topic that gets brought up again and again seems to be whether the drivers can handle the pressure or not. In my opinion, I feel like that's something that can be overcome, whereas driving ability just kind of gets picked up as the season goes, watching other teams, getting comfortable with the robot, etc. As I put the robot out on the field for the first time at Lone Star, it really shook my nerves to see teams like 118, 148, and 1477 on the other side of the field. When one of their mentors came to ask me a question about our bot while I was setting up for autonomous, I actually froze and wasn't sure what to say. It ended up taking the whole on-season before I became comfortable enough to keep cool in any situation, but of course that's too late (although we did perform well at IRI and TRR). Yes it took a whole season but I can respond to many situations more collectedly now.

In the end I think both long-haul and short-term drive teams have their advantages and disadvantages. If there's a way to simulate the pressure in a closed environment, that would probably help a lot during tryouts, too bad there isn't really any way other than to experience it first-hand.