[George A.]

I hate reiterate what other people are saying, but if the team wants #1 bad enough then they will win. An example of this would be this past year at the Palmetto Regional. We (11) finished 5th overall and was picked by team 281 to ally with them. We accepted. Later on in the allaince selections the team that we mentored (1302) was picked by the number 8 seed. Next thing you know we are playing each other in the finals! They won the first match and we had to win the second. Things got screwy because one of their partners was broken so they decided to put in team 95, but they had already declared that it would be team 1302 and their other partner (i forget the #), but if we wanted to play by the rulebook verbatim then since the robots had already been introduced the match was considered started. We were left with 2 options. Play the game with 1302 and 95 and hope we won to force a third match, or force them to put in their disabled robot and basically guarantee ourselves the win. In the spirit of GP we chose the first option. We won the second match and by time that match was over their third partner was working. We then went onto the 3rd match and wound up winning. We could've gone easy on them and let them win, granted this is a little more extreme than the number one seed, but its the same principle. PLAY TO WIN!!!