2013 Connecticut Regional

[KrazyCarl92]

What a weekend. 22 seasons of FIRST Robotics history, and Team 20 has its best competition yet! So proud to be a part of that.

Congrats to Team 230 for their Regional Chairman's award; this is a team that everyone should take time to learn from, be inspired by, and emulate.

Thank you to the Cyber Knights for joining our alliance. Your robot's pyramid shooting and difficult to block, high volume full court shooting was a very nice complement to our floor-pick up frisbee scoring machine. It was a pleasure to work with you again for the second year in a row to take the regional! The level at which our teams strategize is truly uncommon and it makes for a great partnership when our teams get together.

To the Grasshoppers:
Why in the world did you fall to number 24? A 4 CIM drive train with 6 driven traction wheels, an extendable blocker to block full court shots, a 30 point climber with a potential 20 point dumper, and a smart drive team to boot. 'Nuff said. All we had to do was determine each match whether > 30 points in favor of our alliance would be contributed by some action other than purely climbing for the match. If yes, do that action. If no, climb. We then had an alliance partner that consistently gave us at least 30 points per match. That kind of versatility is rare. I thought you were exactly what we wanted when we picked you. When I visited your pit immediately after selections my expectations were blown out of the water. Congratulations on the win, you've earned it, and thank you for being such an important part of it . One word description: Clutch.

We once again performed a collaborative scouting effort with local teams in the New York Capital District with teams 1665, 4134, and 4254. Without the help of these teams, our scouting, strategy, and performance could not have been the same. Thank you for your part in our success as a team this weekend and as a community throughout this season.

Congrats to the finalist alliance of 4134, 2067, and 230! Those scores your teams were putting up throughout eliminations would have been enough to take many regionals handily.

Congrats to 4134 on your Judge's Award! Simply put, the description sounded like they gave you the award for being an all around awesome team, and I couldn't agree more, keep it up! It's always wonderful to see Capital Region teams taking home hardware.

I'd like to acknowledge a complete GP act by our neighbors: Team 2791, Shaker Robotics. They were our alliance partners as Finalists at WPI three weeks ago, and even though they weren't competing here, some of their team members made the 2 hour trip to Hartford on Saturday to cheer us on. Not only that, but they even helped our alliance strategize during eliminations! Having someone focus on how to play against all of the remaining alliances while we were busy worrying about the task at hand was a huge help in getting through a competitive set of matches. Thanks guys!

Thanks to all of the volunteers who make this event possible. It's really great to have such hard working people making sure everything goes as smoothly as possible, and it certainly shows.

Lastly, I'd like to say how proud I am of our students. We had such a cohesive drive-strategy-scouting unit, the loudest section in the stands, and plenty of our students working with other teams to pass inspection. Maybe some of that had to do with a robot that required a grand total of 4 minutes of repair all weekend. Regardless, you guys continually inspire me and make me proud to be a Rocketeer!