Smoky Mountain Regional 2011

[Travis Hoffman]

What a great rookie event!

I first would like to thank all the veteran team students and mentors who swarmed all over the pits helping out the rookies and younger teams, of which there were many. That is always a great dynamic to see when a bunch of vets travel to first-year events, where the percentage of rookie and "first and only event of the season" teams is usually high. Many smiles were generated among the young teams as a result of your efforts.

Thanks also to the volunteers (including those of the non-Tennessee variety - Rocky Top!) and sponsors who made this event possible. The venue was wonderful (although I second the more/cheaper food options request), the city excellent, and the experience most fun. We also hope to return to Knoxville in future seasons.

Congratulations to Kevin Kelly of 234 for the Regional Woodie Flowers Finalist award, and a big congrats to Team Krunch 79 on their Chairman's Award. Your team members were *everywhere* helping out this weekend - much deserved!

Next, I want to thank the great Team Hammond 71 for selecting us as alliance partners. Thank you for putting your trust in us.

I enjoyed how 71's coach Brian Beatty worked so well with our coach Keith Rising and 2974. All complemented each other well, keeping the strategy flexible to keep us on the rails. According to Brian, this was the "hardest he had to work" at coaching in a long time. When you see the Beatty Beast having to instantaneously switch to playing DEFENSE (can I get three smiles up ) after an autonomous mishap damaged their arm...and then absolutely ROCKING at it...and then quickly fixing their arm before the next match...and then STILL deciding to play a lot of defense later on in the finals...you know it was quite an unusual event! Tube starvation for the win!

Thanks to Team 2974 for serving as an excellent partner. Creating traffic for the opponents, setting picks to free 71 and 48 from the equally-strong opposing defense, scoring in autonomous exactly when we needed it - y'all did a great job - welcome to St. Louis!

Thanks to all we faced in the elimination rounds, especially our outstanding finals opponents 801, 234, and 1747, and all 24 elimination round teams really, for putting on a VERY entertaining, hard-fought show for the crowd. So many close matches, all kinds of strategies, both offensive and defensive - we had em all hanging on the edges of their seats to the end!

Blair commented on the overall quality of teams at this regional. I had the same impression. Top 10 teams have 30+ OPR - this rivals Connecticut and other veteran events noted for their "high quality". Here's the list of 10+ OPR teams for TN (using OPRnet):

1      71      66.3664
2      234     58.7022
3      48      55.9505
4      801     40.4798
5      1592    38.6289
6      931     35.8018
7      337     35.395
8      1208    35.0099
9      829     33.3516
10     1024    33.1398
11     1519    25.9286
12     3824    25.8579
13     1741    24.7754
14     1421    19.9655
15     547     16.1886
16     2918    16.0502
17     34      15.6595
18     1261    15.4081
19     379     14.2061
20     79      13.3139
21     1249    11.9186
22     451     10.3362
 
22/46 teams competing = 48% of competing teams with 10+ OPR

Finally, I'd like to thank and congratulate my teammates on Team 48, especially the pit crew, minibot team (go Bubbles! - our almost all-Tetrix minibot), and drive team, whose hard work between Pittsburgh and this event surely paid off on the field. Time to focus now on even more continuous improvement at North Carolina...and then St. Louis!