[Andy Grady]

We were having big problems with popping the balls at competitions this year. When we used the balls we bought, we inflated them to size, and we never popped one while practicing. When we got to regionals, we realized that the balls, though the same size, seemed extremely over inflated. Almost as if FIRST found a slightly smaller ball and inflated it to maximum capacity to reach size. During the UTC finals, we popped a ball at a key moment and it eventually cost us a match and ultimately, very possibly, the championship. Then at the championships, in curie we popped 2 balls in 3 rounds...resulting in a warning from referees that next time we popped a ball, we would be disqualified. Anyone who saw our robot would have realized that we filed down the sharp edges insanely, even before the warning was issued! Luckily that never factored into the rest of our rounds. Of course, ToMMan is right, its the nature of the game for design to be like that...testing will not always equal the actual environment of what everyone is going to see. Either way, I vote for something different next year.

-Andy Grady