Hello Steve, and everyone else. I almost never post on Chief Delphi... but I just had to search for you to express my overwhelming gratitude for what happened this weekend. For years it's been my dream to ally with 1678 to win a regional (yes, folks, we always seem to find a way to NOT win a regional) or just to have fun. Ever since 2012 I've looked to your team as a role model for ours. The Circuits build robots that are both awesomely competitive and yet possible for a team like ours to build "if only we had thought of that." Your kids are wonderful and you and the other mentors are friendly and encouraging and very very smart.
One piece of advice we at 1671 took from you this year was to "strive to get significantly better between each competition." You witnessed how we took that advice to heart by our dramatic improvement from the Central Valley Regional to the Sacramento Regional. We more than doubled our average score. We carried that same spirit to Champs. We knew we needed to be more than a one trick pony... three stacks of six is a nice trick... but not good enough for Champs. We tried to develop a can grabber, but couldn't find the weight. We thrashed around desperately for a couple of weeks, but finally settled on attempting a three tote autonomous. With our practice bot, two nights before we had to ship our 30 lbs of stuff into the trailer for a four day trek to St. Louis, one of my wiz kids, Patrick (yeah... you know Patrick) came up with a slick little wheel to spin that that second recycle bin out of the way. It looked promising, and at 3 AM we actually got it to work 4 out of 5 times. BUT... we ran out of time... we never tested it with the rest of our game plan.
When we got to champs we knew we were taking a big risk. The 3-tote auton was not ready. But our student leadership would not play it safe. They came to Champs hoping to win Newton. And thus... Thursday was a disaster. We only got the 3-tote auton to work once. It totally messed up our game plan and we looked like a total mess (we were). We got back to basics on Friday, but a couple of driver errors (dang humans
) and robot glitches held us back from our Davis performance. Still we, climbed from 49 to 25 in the ranking. But the impression had been made on teams who don't know us well. Based on our Champs performance we were not a reliable pick, and I got up Saturday morning fully expecting that our tournament was over.
At the risk of escalating the drama... my students have informed me that a couple of knuckleheads on Chief Delphi have implied that we sandbagged. Let me put that nasty little rumor to rest. We worked so so so hard to try to put the best robot with the best chance to win that we could on the field. We played every match the best that we could. Thursday night my team was depressed. And Friday night we were despondent.
I can only try to describe the overwhelming relief and joy we felt when 118 and 1678 entrusted us with the role we ended up playing. To win it all, to go from near despair in the morning to ultimate satisfaction in the evening, and to win it with friends like you after these last several years... well... it's like a corny after school special... only it really happened.
So... again... thank you Steve, and to all of you at 1678. The genius of FRC is that it always seems to find a way to make great friends out of fierce competitors.