Why Losers Lose?

[XaulZan11]

Most teams don't make eliminations because they simply don't put enough time or take it as seriously as most of us on CD do. There is a very good percentage of teams who just view FIRST has an after school activity and spend a couple of hours a couple of days per week during buildseason. Compared to the effort the 111s, 1114s, 254s put in to being competitive, its unbelieveable how little effort a good chunk of teams put in.

[waialua359]

Time.

Resources, funding, mentorship, partnerships, collaboration, etc. etc. are the main differences between teams that win and teams that lose. Not only from a competition standpoint, but overall learning objectives/experiences.
Teams in general are always working towards a better ____ on the above list, which in turn alleviates time.
Being inefficient with your time is a relative term dependent on how much _________ you have.

[MentorOfSteel]

I think what Tolstoy said about happy families can be applied here: winners are all alike, every loser loses it its own way.


-George

[davidthefat]

Our downfall was:

Lack of practice
Lack of organization
Lack of efficiency

[slijin]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

My personal favorite.

You make a custom drivetrain that performs worse than and/or is less reliable than the kop drivetrain.

Oh man. This was why we were destroyed in Galileo last year (finished CMP at practically the bottom, despite amazing showings at our regionals). We had gone with a dropped-center 6WD, but a few matches into CMPs, our drive started throwing chains every single match. To this day, despite numerous off-season repairs, it still constantly throws the chain (we found that one spacer had been chewed up, allowing the wheel to slide on the axle, throwing the sprockets out of alignment, but the problem persisted).

Another one is strategy, which is absolutely crucial in eliminations. It's part of the reason we lost semis in NY, since the other team had put a starvation strategy into effect (this coupled with our alliance captain losing comms).

You obviously don't get it. There are no losers in FIRST! I say that anyone who builds a robot out of a kit of parts, in just 6 weeks, to solve a complicated task is definitely a winner!

[TofuRama]

A few things are:

-incorrect prioritizing
-not reading the rules
-not thoroughly testing your robot
-small build time screwup

This list is coming from what happened with our team this year.

When we planned our robot, we didn't prioritize picking up game pieces off the ground at all, resulting in us getting very few (no) points on the board. In addition, we didn't read the rules all the way and had to re-design our robot three times during build. Lastly, since we didn't test our robot during the season (practices were at quarter speed) we missed key driving issues such as our drive train overheating and binding. (After competition we found out that someone forgot to grease our gearbox which caused a lot of the issue, hence, small build time screw-ups ).

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

You obviously don't get it. There are no losers in FIRST! I say that anyone who builds a robot out of a kit of parts, in just 6 weeks, to solve a complicated task is definitely a winner!

Statements like this convince teams that not trying harder is acceptable. Here is a tip, it isn't. Good enough isn't.

[ttldomination]

I say continuity and student determination.

Continuity because it helps to have veteran students/mentors that have been around the FIRST block. These veterans have seen a wide array of problems solved with an even wider array of solutions.

Student determination because no matter how veteran the mentor is, at the end of the day the students are going to run the team. I've seen extremely determined students drive entire teams to victory, and a lack of these students drive even more teams to failure.

- Sunny G.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Time.

Exactly. Lack of time. Less successful teams squander their time like it was free.

Every year, I find that no student can fabricate a(n) _____ as fast as I can. This coming year (2012) MY personal focus will be on getting our returning students (who are more awesome than usual) to become as fast as I am.

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

You obviously don't get it. There are no losers in FIRST! I say that anyone who builds a robot out of a kit of parts, in just 6 weeks, to solve a complicated task is definitely a winner!

Sure there are - everyone who didn't win is by definition a loser. You can stink at building robots, and lose because of it. Just slapping together the minimum is NOT winning. Sorry.

One of my pet peeves is when someone makes a speech at an FRC competition and states "You are all winners". Wrong. Just as in life, we are NOT all winners, or we wouldn't bother competing.

[Koko Ed]

Lack of understanding the rules. not sweating the details and general lack of preparation are their undoing more often than not.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Lack of understanding the rules. not sweating the details and general lack of preparation are their undoing more often than not.

I'd add to this: failure to test under field conditions.

[waialua359]

I wanted to add:
Its what you do during the off-season which is most effective in reducing your chances at "losing."
Start fundraising early, start training kids early, start planning out your year now.

A few examples of what we are doing now, to help alleviate the challenge of the 6 week build season.
Prototyping a new elevator lift system, continue work on a prototype swerve drive base, fixing up our current crate for next season including IRI next month, fundraising like crazy (personally writing for 3 grants now), building VEX robots for an August 21st competition, ordered $$$$ of supplies in the area of wires/electronics, pnuematics, aluminum stock, lego pieces, VEX piecies, scheduling of outreach events for Fall 2011, reserving space for team bonding camp in October, conducting visitations of our program for STEM-related interest groups, working on procurement docs for current and ongoing renovations to robotics areas, etc.
Working on the 2012 HI FRC regional tournament with discussions on the friday team social (tentative agenda/plans are set), recruitment of mainland teams to HI (subsidized team packages), and recruitment of new HI rookie teams (should be about 40 HI teams next year).
I listed a whole bunch off the top of my head to show how "urgent" things are right now in preparing for the 2012 season.

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by waialua359

reserving space for team bonding camp in October

How does that work?

[ghostmachine360]

Lack of a standard of excellence within the season, in these areas:

- preparation before the season starts
- quality of the work during the season
- adherence to a set schedule at all points
- drive practice intensity at the end of build season & during competition season (if applicable)
- keeping team values intact throughout everything
- helping to build up leadership values in younger team members
- adherence to FIRST values in GP & general decency within the regionals & CMP