[David Lame]

In 2014 (Aerial Assist), we were having problems with the ball falling out of our shooter. Our shooter was a catapult of aluminum bar, bent to have a circular footprint where the ball rested until being shot. The problem was that it wasn't deep enough. As the drivers raced off after picking up the ball, the acceleration would sometimes cause the ball to drop out. We needed some way to keep it in, but whatever we used had to be something we could pull it over as we picked it up off the floor.

Of course we discovered this problem at our first district, and were trying to fix it during "out of bag" time just before the second district. Mentors had come up with a few proposals, but testing showed them inadequate. We had a few failures. The time was running out. Then someone saw the broom. It was a push broom, 28" wide, with tall, soft, bristles. It fit perfectly. The bristles were easy to drag the ball over with our pickup mechanism, but they provided just enough resistance to keep the ball in the cradle before we shot.

The only thing that made it look a little not so...err...that word, was that it fit so well and worked so well you very well might have thought that we did it on purpose.