Archimedes 2012!

[Adam Freeman]

What an exciting and interesting weekend. Thursday started out pretty rough for us, with some missed coop balances and had a communication/controls system problem. Friday we were awesome in our 3 matches, finishing perfect 4pts for each one. Saturday we climbed back into the top 3, then ended up finishing in the top 8 overall. We were selected by an awesome team, 2826 and then selected 4143.

Our alliance struggled with the triple balance throughout the eliminations. I am not really sure why...Wave and HOT easily tripled with Adambots Friday evening. We also hit a couple of triples on the practice field with 4143 Saturday morning, although they were not quite as smooth. I wish we would have had more time to get everything correct before we got kicked off the practice field.

After failing to triple in either of our first 4 elimination matches, our alliance opted for ditching the triple and just trying to out score our opponents by 20pts and double balancing. This was effective in F1. It was also pretty effective in F2, until we hopped over the barrier and got stuck on a ball. We were not able to free ourselves and only managed a single balance. We also effectively denied 2826 any balls in the last 30s of the match. Our alliance was up about 12-15 when we got stuck. We knew that the Canadian alliance was slowly closing in the gap on our scoring, so we decided that we would attempt a triple balance if we were up by less than 15 in the last 45s of the match. During the match the scores were extremely close, I believe we were up by 2-3 when we called for the triple. Everyone was in position and balanced....then disaster struck! This is what I believe happened, since I haven't seen the video...both 67 and 2826 robots started to tip. We saved ours with the arm, 2826 tipped, then some how got back on the bridge and it balanced for a couple of seconds...then they tipped off again. This was incredibly heartbreaking for all of our alliance.

To 2826 - You guys are incredible. Just a scoring machine. It was great to get a chance to finally play with you guys. After getting knocked out by you last year, we definitely had all our scouts eyes on you. You did not dissappoint. You guys are a Powerhouse team!

Jake, thanks for letting me lead the alliance. You are a great coach. I wish I would have come up/stuck with a winning strategy. Eric and Tyler..it was awesome talking with you all weekend.

To 4143 - Thank you guys for being an awesome third partner. You did everything we asked you to do. Even had to put up with me yelling, probably incoherantly, back there. Your robot was capable and durable. You were a definite advantage to our alliance.

To Alliance #2 (1114, 2056, and 4334), what an incedible alliance. Congratulations! We knew we would have to go through you to get to Einstein...and we knew you would be triple balancing in every match. Just the threat of the potential you guys had in any of our matches, forced our hand away from our initial strategy and into the triple balance. For an alliance that was putting up an average of 88 ball points (us) after ditching the triple balance, your strategy and execution intimidated us into going back to trying it. Which looking at the data in hindsight was a terrible decision.

There are so many tiny little details that if changed could have effected the outcome. I am trying not to look back, but it keeps happening. The scores don't look that close or high but the matches were epic. We could not have lost to a better alliance, and IMO would not have lost to any other alliance in St. Louis.

It's not fair to anyone what happened on Einstein, but the class and professionalism you guys displayed was amazing. I don't think I would have been able to stay so calm and so composed during those events. Thank you for being model teams in the face of adversity.

To 1114 and 2056 - It is always fun/challenging/exciting to be in a division with you guys. Our teams have so much respect and admiration for each other it's incredible. Karthik and Tyler you guys are such good friends...just hanging out and talking with you made for a great weekend.

Now on to acceptance and recovery....