[Chris Hibner]

Oh boy...

I want to tell two stories that REALLY illustrate the point the original poster was getting at.

Before 2001, there were no divisions at the championship. Each year there were 200-250 teams in one large competition, with the top 8 getting to pick alliance partners for the eliminations (that might have been expanded to a top-12 in 2000, but I can't remember).

In 1999, my team at the time (308 - Walled Lake Monsters) were ranked 4th with one match to play. We were paired with Team 1 (The Juggernauts, one of the eventual winners of the championship) and we were going up against a couple of lesser robots. All we had to do is have a mediocre score to jump into the #1 spot. Just prior to the match we had to do some pit work on the drive train and the pit crew plugged the motors in such that the front motors were fighting the rear motors. Thanks to Team 1 we won the match, but due to us not being able to drive, we had a poor qualifying score. We dropped to the 10th seed and we weren't picked for eliminations. One mistake sent us from the #1 seed to watching from the sidelines. That killed me. (note that we went to the match without testing because of the fix taking too long and we didn't have much time to make it to the match)

At the 2000 championship, we had a similar situation. The pit crew had to unplug the drive motors in order to demonstrate something to some judges in the pit. Like in 1999, we had to rush to make our match and didn't do a function check. When the match started, we quickly realized that the motors weren't plugged in. We salvaged a few points by using the arm on the robot to drag the robot to the ramp. That was match 6 of 7 and we were ranked 6th going into that match. We wound up with a poor qualifying score in that match and we finished ranked 14th. Had we had a mediocre score we would've ranked around 7-8. Once again, we weren't picked and we watched from the sidelines in eliminations. The only solace is that the presentation to the judges apparently worked since we won the Leadership in Control award, but I would have rather been playing in the eliminations.

I am one of the biggest advocates you will find of having a pre-match checklist that gets done just before pushing the robot out of the pits. It's unfortunate that it took such horrible experiences to make me that way.