This year's game was pretty exciting and allowed plenty of strategy discussion and variation. I loved the small opportunities to score, the fast-progressing game and the way that it got me to scream my lungs out yelling "Get out of there!" and "Dump, Dump, DUMP!!!!" even though I knew our drivers hadn't a chance of hearing me.
We built our most effective and most polished robot to date this year, with 8th graders and freshmen just as involved as our seniors. The early release of the new control system was a great idea, to teach our new members as well as allow teams to familiarize themselves and others with such a different system.
The organization of the qualifying matches went quite smoothly and quickly, considering how many teams were there to play. It seems that every volunteer on Curie knew what they were doing and were smart. There seemed to be no complaints on the competition field!
I like the different color curtains for each division in the Pits, and the Pit layout. I much prefer the team number order rather than trying to place rookies and veteran teams together. There's merit in the idea, but as a scout/strategist, finding people is much simpler when the Pits are in numerical order. And groups of veteran team members tend to roam around checking to see if people need help anyway. Such is the incredibly good sportsmanship of
FIRST.
The Pit announcements were much clearer than I expected them to be. I think this may have been mentioned before.
And... I got to see such legendary teams as Thunderchickens, Killer Bees, RUSH, Bomb Squad, Rocketeers, Holy Cows, Robowranglers, TechnoKats, Chief Delphi, Delphi ELITE, X-bots, MOE, the Pink Team, HOT, N.E.R.D.S., Wildstang, Children of the Swamp, X-Cats, Miss Daisy, Team Hammond, KRUNCH, Exploding Bacon and the Adambots! I even made some friends among these awesome people...
I'm pretty sure I've missed some along the way. I saw The Fro and met Billfred (he probably thinks I'm nuts) and heard some truly inspiring team/robot stories. I would have loved to see everyone else, but I badly sprained my ankle right before Atlanta (my luck amazes me sometimes) and was confined to either limping badly or hauling myself about in a borrowed wheelchair. My arms were tired.
All in all, the Championships experience was phenomenal, especially to a senior who (idiotically) did not attend her freshman year and whose team didn't go 2007 and 2008. Everyone there was remarkably kind, polite and helpful, and things ran pretty smoothly in Curie after Thursday. "Like a regional, but four times bigger!" And fun!
Wow, long post.