[dtengineering]

If there has ever been a more unanimous choice for Chairman's than 360, I doubt I've seen it. I think every team there had to admit that the most deserving team had won.... and honestly, you were a serious threat to take the Championship, too.

From the moment I saw video of the Xbots big blue machine on youtube, I couldn't help but think, "Dang... I wish I'd thought of that. What a beautiful machine." Now it has a beautiful trophy to sit next to it, thanks to some great play alongside 1425 and 1569.

Perhaps one of my best memories of the event (aside from getting to present the WFFA to Mike Criner... I'm willing to bet he's still in shock...) was the rendition of the Turkish national anthem on Saturday morning. I never did catch the student's name, but that was simply the best rendition of any national anthem I have seen at any FRC event. I'm sure hoping the Sultans of Turkiye will be back next year.

I have great empathy for 2927 and 2922, the #9 and #10 seeds. We have ranked as high as 12th and not been picked, but to be one or two steps short of the top eight, and then not make it to the eliminations must hurt that much more. Take heart... eventually this structure pays you back... three weeks after seeing 12th and NOT being picked we seeded 65th and WERE selected for the playoffs. It is weird and inexplicable sometimes, but it does work out pretty well over time.

To our wonderful alliance partners, the Flying Hedgehogs, who have a bodacious machine that truly lives up to their audacious name, and the tough tank pusher from 2944, it was great to play with you. We have absolutely no idea what caused our machine to become partially paralyzed after autonomous in our second match. We hadn't changed anything before the match, and when we hooked it up after the match it worked fine in the pits. The only weird thing, the drive team tells me, was a DS reset right before the match, but the captain spoke to the field officials and they didn't notice any comm errors during the match. In any case, I can still picture emtpy red trailers passing by our machine, our hopper loaded and ready, but the robot unable to move or dump. Hopefully we have paid the karmic debt to the glitch-gods for all three of us for the next few years, because it just was not to be on Saturday afternoon.

Most importantly, however... thanks to Kevin, Deb, and the hundreds of volunteers and sponsors that put this event together. The ride back home was filled with lots of chatter about "next year".

For those of you heading on to Atlanta, congratulations and good luck. For the rest of us, "next year" starts now.

Jason

P.S. And how could I forget to thank the Skunks for sharing their scouting data? I spent more time looking at that than I did at the match results, I think.