Without a doubt, Peachtree Regional 2011 with 2815.
I suppose I should preface this with a little backstory. 2815 was the third team I've been involved with over the years. I had coached for a season and a part with 1293 as a college student, then moved over to 1618 for three seasons until they folded after 2009. In all of this, only once did my team reach eliminations (and that was quarterfinals in 2007 after being the beneficiary of The Algorithm; those who were around will remember.) 2815 started off with much better results with Stephen Kowski coaching, reaching the Palmetto finals in 2009 and semis two other times.
2011 had been a year of upheaval for the team--Kowski had graduated, other supporters had shifted away from the team due to job changes, and the robot that year had a very different look compared to the sheetmetal-tastic designs of the two years prior. Oh, and all of our non-teacher mentors but myself were stuck back in Columbia with a pop exam the Friday of the regional. So it's two teachers and me.
We kept making little hardware and software improvements to the robot on Thursday, to the point that we were in that straggler group where they start the practice match, run about twenty seconds of teleop, and then foghorn the match to make sure you talk to the field. Nothing seemed too far out of whack, so we left at pit closing feeling pretty decent.
Friday of the regional was easily one of the five worst competition days I've ever had in my ten years.
Six of the seven matches saw a robot calamity of some sort or another. We kept grinding through them, chatting with other teams and sharing what was surely the worst luck a team could have in FRC. We had Palmetto the next week, so the dread wasn't there...but man, it would've been nice to start the season on a high note right? We relaxed that night, spitballed over things while eating some peanuts, and hit the sack.
Saturday morning, we had another issue--don't remember what it was. Then came our second-to-last match, where we played alongside 2415, the #1 seed. Before the match, their drive team comes up to us and starts looking at the drivetrain (4-CIMs, wedgetop, 6WD--nothing too fancy that year). They asked how fast it'd go ("About 14"), how our driver was (he drove since we were rookies)...could we play defense? I looked at Cameron and said "Sure, we'll give it what we've got."
We go out there, and the clouds parted for two glorious minutes of defense to shut down 1311 and company and get the W. We were feeling pretty good at that point, mostly since it was the second time we'd lasted two full minutes on the field.
Then came our last match, where our digital sidecar came unplugged. D'oh.
With the writing surely on the wall, we were in the pits discussing changes we could make that afternoon before crating up for Palmetto. After the last qualification match was played, we sent our programmer Stacey out for alliance selection...and I snuck up to the stands to watch. 2415 was the #1 seed, and they picked #3 seed 1771. That right there was pretty much the ballgame; someone would have to break or an idiot partner would have to draw red cards for them to lose the regional at that point. The draft went down to 8 (still unpicked, no surprise), then back up to #2 (still no surprises), then the announcements before everyone broke for lunch. If you ever saw Bob Barker cut away from the price tag saying whether you've won the car or not, you know the feeling here.
Finally, the moment of truth. "Teams 2415 and 1771 would like to invite team..." At this point, Stacey (now at CalTech) has put his foot back and is ready to walk back to the pits, and even I'm thinking there's no way on earth.
"...2815."
I was the only person from 2815 in the stands, but apparently I covered for my teammates with the jumping up and down and cheering until Stacey got there and accepted for us. (Heck, I'd have been happy to be in eliminations at all, let alone playing with them!) I zipped back to the pits, where it took a little convincing--no this is not a joke, yes we really are picked, yes we are on the #1 alliance, yes we need to get ready!
We jumped into work fast as we could, knowing we were picked for defense. The robot was ten pounds underweight, so we decided to ballast up. Coming up dry in our spare parts and toolboxes, we went over to 1771's pit and asked if they had anything that might work. They loaned us a lead hammer, which we covered in electrical tape (safety first, after all) and zip-tied to our frame in the front where it'd stay out of trouble.
All through this, I'm thinking "don't screw this up, don't screw this up, don't screw this up". Quarterfinals went through easily (114-2, 128-0), with us just herding tubes and starving the other side while 1771 and 2415 covered the grid in logos before nailing the minibots. We killed the autonomous code to play it safe (it was just a bottom-row routine), and the claw only came out to snatch a tube from the wall. Other than that, block the middle, shuffle tubes our way, and stay out of trouble.
The tempo got faster in semis, new territory for me (remember how I said I'd never gotten out of quarters as a coach?). We were posted up in a corner of the arena now, all three robots and drive teams just staying loose and checking everything. Our batteries weren't getting topped up in time, so our partners spotted ones off their cart. (I'm talking a library book cart with batteries and chargers here, people!) Semis came and went with relatively more struggle (114-36, 92-23), but holy crap were in the finals.
I remember that 1771 was trying to fix their minibot between semis and finals, but the crew rushed us onto the field for Finals 1 before they really had it 100%. I tried to calm them down--2415 had theirs, we were running miraculously, and we'll just push on through. We counter-defend 1649, our partners get three logos, and 2415 gets first place in the minibot race. 84-53, red alliance. Blue calls their timeout (more time to breathe and fix that minibot), then handshake time. Check the iPhone, people are tweeting and Facebooking me left and right from the webcast. Zip-tie the battery in, check everything one more time, and it's go time.
1771's back up to full speed, and we execute the routine just as we had five times previously. Two ubertubes for us, one ubertube for blue. (1649, like us, didn't run autonomous; 1261 missed.) Both our partners load the top rack up, but I see we're slowing down. Look at the Classmate, and sure enough our battery is starting to go on us with about 45 seconds left in the match. Get to about 30, and 2415's stopped moving (one of their digital sidecars apparently blew out). We have the big screen directly in our view from that end of the field, and we're up about 30...but we need 1771's minibot to put it away. Ten seconds left, the race starts. It's on the pole as the clock hits nine, but it's not going. They shimmy a bit, then it starts going up at 4. Blue never gets one away, but ours gets all four lights on the top with two seconds left. The webcast cut to our player station, where we'd already started jumping up and down with all twelve of us going nuts (plus queuer extraordinaire Sue Wayman sneaking in to tell us to get our robots). 67 seconds later (yes, I played the tape back to recount this story), the score goes on the screen. For our driver and operator that'd been together for three years, it was a long-overdue taste of gold. For me, it was the end of seven years of almost, of woulda-coulda-shoulda, of wait-til-next-year, of is-it-
ever-gonna-happen?.
I still have that driver badge at my desk, clipped to the medal from that day. There are three others with it, two of them gold, but that one remains the most special not just because I coached but because two really great teams saw through all the crap we were working through, liked working with us in quals, and took a gamble by passing on the 24 other robots left in the field to pick us.
Years may pass, drivers graduate, you might move on to another team, but you never forget the first time you hang a banner.