2011 Virginia Regional @VCU

[sparkydp]

Sorry to not be at Virginia Regional for the first time in history, hopefully we'll be back next year if NC and VA can get their weekends un-lined up.

Good luck to everybody!

Missing you,
Team 435!

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

Our hotel is on fire. All kids are out and safe.

You guys at an airport hotel? There's alot of fire/police activity out on the street. We're at the Holiday Inn Express.

[Akash Rastogi]

Best of luck Jersey crew. MORT, give em hell!

[Coredesat]

For those interested, here's a video I filmed walking through the pits early in the day. I'll probably be doing more of this tomorrow and Saturday (I am one of the event photographers, after all...).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8tr6scT3Vk

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

Our hotel is on fire. All kids are out and safe.

Glad you guys are okay! Just carry that fire into tomorrow and you will be golden!

[Coredesat]

Pretty good regional this year. I had a lot of fun documenting it (although now the hard part begins - sorting through nearly 2,000 photos).

I'm currently working on getting some videos up on my YouTube account.

[mahumnut]

1418 had a great time, but I would be lying if I didn't say we were a little disappointed with the playoffs. Oh well, team 539 I'm sure learned a lot and kept spirits up as our alliance captain, team 1086 did their best to get their robot working (which was absolutely stunning when running at full capacity), and team 1793 subbed in a pinch.

I'm sure if 1086 and 539 weren't experiencing comm issues, our matches would have been a lot more interesting.

Congrats to the winners teams 25, 1676, and 1522, you did an amazing job!

[ks_mumupsi]

congrats to all the teams out there. I have heard great things about this event.

Even bigger shoutouts to our jersey mates 1676 for winning another regional, (and 303 took philly), 25 bounced back just as expected.

congrats to 1086 on chairmans and 1885 our partners from DC for a SECOND EI award, they won EI in DC as well!!!

Good to see all the jersey teams making VCU like a second home..heh.

Hope to see you all in St.louis.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

Our hotel is on fire. All kids are out and safe.

Surely that was you guys bringing down the house, like we did today.
Seriously, safe was the best word we could hear.

Originally Posted by ks_mumupsi

Even bigger shoutouts to our jersey mates 1676 for winning another regional, (and 303 took philly), 25 bounced back just as expected.

Thanks!

We had a lot of fun, even with a disappointing call in our last Q match. Great people, great venue. More tomorrow after some sleep - 371 miles in 6:15 and now off to bed.

[PayneTrain]

After we get all of the gremlins out of the robot in Baltimore, the field gremlins reared their ugly head.

A 6-3-0 record that I considered to be a 7-2-0 because the minibot poles were calibrated incorrectly, but the team update saying the refs can't judge by sight didn't account for the FMS being itself.

It seemed as if Blue 2 and Blue 3 liked to die in the middle of every match during elims. The 8, 5, and 7 seeds always had them go down in the middle of the match.

In our eliminations match, the 2 seed team had a human player knocking a tube out of 75s grip with another tube. The head referee said at the beginning that a move like that will be considered a penalty plus a yellow card, since it isn't very GP.

However, there was no penalty since the referee said it was "a one time thing," "can't be considered a strategy," and "she didn't see it," even with corroboration from 25's coach (Shawn?).

Then, 612 got a red card for doing a one time thing that you can't consider a strategy by shoving 1895 off of them and into our zone. That was in TU 16, but with all of the pin and lane violations 1895 was racking up against 612 on the field, it's hard to argue that aggressive play begets aggressive play.

I'm not trying to shift blame on to the referees or the opposition, it's just apparent our luck in 2010 ran out with nothing left for this year.

We'll be back, VCU. We'll be back.

[wilsonmw04]

We had a great time over the past three days. This is the first time we have had a robot that consistently preformed to our design criteria. I have to give my team high marks their performance. We didn't place as high as we would have liked, but ehhh... who really cares?

On a slightly different note: my team was thoroughly impressed with 1676. They are truly a class act. Congrats to 1086 for yet another Chairman's win. You all are one of the elite teams in FIRST. Watch out for them in St. Louis!

[nahstobor]

I'd like to give a shout out to team 2363, triple helix, that program sure has developed fast since 2008. They've had some rough years, especially in 2009, at both of your regional events, you had the most underrated robot, you all should have been picked at both of your events. But now in 2011, they have come full circle. Congrats on your Palmetto win and finalists appearance at VCU. If it wasn't for those New Jersey teams you would have two blue banners going into the championship . 2363 is the best robot coming out of Virginia this year, look out for them at championships.

[JesseK]

There was an interesting pool of robots left to pick from when the alliance selections came back up to the #1 seed! Basically we chose a strategy to beat the 25/1676 alliance, which could have made it had the 3rd robot worked properly in the second Finals match. Any one of 3 things could have swung that match our way. No, we didn't know that we were being 'starved' of squares -- we still had 2 (3?) full logos, heh. Ah well. It was quite a fun time. I'm certain that same exact strategy will work well for us in St. Louis given the caliber of teams that will be there.

Congrats to 25/1676/1522. It was a well-deserved win.

MANY thanks to our alliance partners 2363 and 540. The tenacity of 2363's pit crew can't be emphasized enough; their whole team is a well-oiled machine and is a force to be reckoned with at champs.

Major congrats to 1086 on CA -- you guys definitely deserve it!

[delsaner]

Wow, what an incredible competition. This may have been one of the greatest competitions we have been to, we certainly had a lot of fun. We were constantly on the edge of our seats watching our team, because we knew we were going up against an alliance that had incredible skill, and we were nervous about what the outcome would be. ALL of you preformed phenomenally and you should be proud of yourselves for what happened.

25 and 1522- We greatly appreciate you both for helping/leading us to victory. This was without a doubt a group effort, and we could not have done it without you two.

2363- Once I discovered you won the Palmetto regional, I started to worry. I always remember your team, and how much far you guys appear to have come. You make yourselves noticable, both on the field with your robot and off the field, in the stands, cheering and spinning your cloth. Your team never ceases to amaze me, and I am looking forward to seeing you all in St. Louis.

1086- Congratulations on winning RCA. From my knowledge and seeing your Chairmans video, you guys definitely deserve it. I am excited to see 1086 coming to St. Louis.

1885- I am glad to hear you are going to St. Louis. You guys deserve to have a spot on a Championship field. Best of luck to you all during St. louis.

[Coredesat]

My annual "X minutes of FIRST...in X/5 minutes" video can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtkcBNu3YCs

I'm still working on getting photos up; I'm uploading Day 1's HUGE photo collection to my Flickr right now.