[mrnoble]

Caveats and qualifiers: I've never been to any other competitions than the Colorado Regional. I have no idea what the atmosphere and level of play are at the the finals. I have no expertise in programming, and a lot of what happens on the field is a black box to me. I don't know anything about any teams winning records.

That being said, here are the teams that inspire me to be a coach:

Montbello High School in Denver. They build their robot out of scrap plywood with a biology teacher as their coach. Every time I looked at their pit last year, it was 100% kids working and smiling; no engineers, no fancy stuff. They were awesome.

Lincoln High in Denver. They had, I think, three kids on their team last year. They decided just build a little thing that would run; nothing fancy at all. It ran so well, they were in the top ten, if I remember correctly. They too were awesome.

Winnovation. Just 'cause they were fast and cool.