Thread: 2009 Midwest Regional
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Unread 03-03-2009, 23:32
Scott Hill Scott Hill is offline
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FRC #1625 (Winnovation)
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Re: 2009 Midwest Regional
Wow, what a ride!!

Thanks to Wildstang for putting together a great alliance and UPS for being a great partner. Congrats Raul on the Woody Flowers award.

Congratulations to the GDC for putting together a game with so many facets, all of which I don't think have been fully explored yet.

Some of the anticipatory talk about Midwest was concerned with the effect of a few top tier robots and the rest of the field. There may have been some evidence of disparate performamce levels during practice and early qualification rounds but any significant gap diminished greatly as teams stepped up performance of robots, understanding of game play / successful strategy, the value of driving skill in accumulation / scoring and defense / pinning, and the importance of good human players (that IRS girl!!). This was defintively proven in elimination rounds with the early departure of the #1seed, escorted out by #8. Congrats to all teams for stepping up and making Midwest a VERY competitive regional.

There was no team there without an achilles heel in their ball flow path, ours included, we were lucky enough to be able to minimize ours to prevail over three other alliances, and not by large margins. Tough fights were put up by the Kilobytes and 2358 & 3067 in Qtr finals, Thunder chickens, Robo pride & 2022 in the semi's (Paul, great job coaxing every ounce of performance out of your alliance, you had us worried for a while, hope you enjoyed the Dew), and 135, 2039 (Adam & Rockford robotics great performance) & 2338 Oswego in the finals, close matches as well.

Simbots & Thunder chickens fast turrets have significant advantage in omnidirectional ball delivery, very important in not having to be perfectly aligned to deliver balls. This combined with what I am sure will be improved ball acquisition / avoidance of defensive pinning by their teams will put them back on top of the game so watch out for them in the future!

Fast dumpers can perform very well, 71, 111 & ourselves included, as long as you can acquire balls quickly and keep free (not get stuck in a non-scoring position in a scrum) especially in endgame when that last score can make all the difference.

So many other great teams!! Chicago Knights, congratulations on the Engineering Inspiration award! You do so much for other teams, ours included (showing that there is so much more to FIRST than having the best bot), and no one deserves it more. The young women of 2781, Robo Pride, are one of the classiest teams I have met and have shown that the game doesn't always have to be played to the lowest common denominator, thank you for your gracious professionalism.

It will be hard to top this experience but we are all looking forward to seeing many of you in Milwaukee and at Championships in Atlanta!!

Scott Hill