[GeeTwo]

Yes, thanks for posting the video - I'll be watching it and forwarding to our other leadership.

3946 held our own first-ever mock kickoff today, inviting a couple of rookie teams to join us. We did a repeat kickoff of 2008 FIRST Overdrive, and had the students break into three separate teams (encouraged to share) to develop overall strategies and high level designs. Two of the teams determined that knocking the balls off of the overpass, carrying them, and hurdling with the robot remaining below the overpass was optimal, but that replacing the trackball on the trackball on the overpass was likely to be more work and/or compromises (such as high CoG and slow progress) than it was worth. They both punched the ball over the overpass, one from very low much like Einstein finalist #16 Bomb Squad. The other decided to also return the trackballs to the overpass, though there wasn't enough detail/description to convince me that it could have worked like that. Unfortunately, none of the groups developed hybrid mode strategies after they realized that the trackball placement was determined (or at least announced) after the robots were in place. After the game reveals, we watched the Einstein finals to see what worked at the very top levels. Lots of fun, and lots of learning; we may do another before kickoff 2016, and will definitely do this at least once a year in the future.