Many years ago I was fortunate to witness one of the
great FRC teams in their pit on a Thursday. They were the last robot to be inspected (it was my first season as an LRI, so it was my job to pester them about that), and they did not make a single practice match.
They did, however, win that Regional. And the Regional Chairman's Award. And several other distinctions during the course of that season, including a very memorable final at IRI.
All of the which is to say, there are many factors to consider in making a pick list beyond how a team performs, or doesn't, in Thursday practice matches.*
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*One day soon, Thursdays at FRC Regionals will be only a memory.
__________________
Richard Wallace
Mentor since 2011 for FRC 3620 Average Joes (St. Joseph, Michigan)
Mentor 2002-10 for FRC 931 Perpetual Chaos (St. Louis, Missouri)
since 2003
I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.
(Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97)