Thanks to all the teams who participated in the inaugural Central Illinois Regional. We trust everyone made it home safely, are glad you came, and hope that you left with fond memories of the "coolest" regional and the snow globe.
To the students of 4143, i am very proud of what you have all accomplished already this year. Each of you has made a great contribution to the overall picture of what it means to be on a FIRST team. Well done, now let's take what we've learned even farther.
Thanks to all of our alliance partners, in particular our finals partners 2039/Rockford Robotics and 171/Cheese Curd Herd, we look forward to seeing you both in Wisconsin.
Congratulations to 525, 1986, and 4296 on your win and for a hard fought three matches in the finals.
Huge thanks to the Tim, Vera, and the organizing committee, all of the sponsors, and all the volunteers. I also want to give Big Al a shout for all the help to me as a rookie Robot Inspector.
It is on to Wisconsin for 4143. Although we do have a few minor (sarcasm) rebuilds to work out after the finals matches. And some design, scouting, and training improvements to incorporate lessons learned.
On the game itself:
- Matches will be hard fought. Build a tough robot. Everything from common sense to the reveal animation made that point, and the game play has borne that out.
- The refs have a huge workload and there is no reasonable expectation they could see everything in a game this hectic. Sometimes those breaks are going to hurt, sometimes they'll help. It won't seem fair. In plenty of cases it will not actually be fair. That's life, and not an unimportant lesson in and of itself.
- If you barely clear a high goal then there's a good chance the ball is coming back out. Use game strategy or plan for this in your shooting design to minimize the risk.
- It is very hard for the HPs to avoid reaching into the field and taking the big penalty. Train. Practice. Have discipline. Be alert if you are a HP and know how much you can help or hurt your alliance by how quickly and precisely you react.
I'll be spending more time using these observations to help the students learn how to respond than on lobbying FIRST for any particular change. No disparagement of anyone pursuing that course, I like sincere efforts to improve the game for everyone. Some of the changes being debated on line (and i'm sure in week 1 bus rides home) would improve the competition. I'm just not going to focus there myself and instead try to use the time to work on the things that are within our team's control. Whatever FIRST does we will deal with when (if) it happens.