Northwest Rankings

[bobcroucher]

We really enjoyed being on the same side of the field as Skunkworks this year. It's only my sophomore year as a mentor, but I've been told that we have never played with you in the entire history of the team. That's pretty amazing! Ultimate Scent just gets better and better with every regional. I guess that's an advantage of doing three. The district system will make this possible for many more teams which will be great for our area.

The eliminations, I likened to a Rugby match. Very rough, and very difficult the entire way. There were a number of alliances at Spokane without a tall blocker, but we never saw that match up in our three eliminations. When we got home, we found the software bug that was locking out our driver controls from time to time. Yay! That was very frustrating, and we kept blaming the rough field, along with anything else we could think of.

Thanks to Confidential for coming back after a couple of big scares in the quarter finals. We came the closest to going home in that match up, but we all buckled down and got it done somehow.

Watching the videos where the skunks were almost pulled over on their side in the finals was amazing and scary. I pretty much missed it live.

Navid, I really appreciate you doing the footwork on the Northwest rankings. I'm super into statistics, and when California started calculating theirs here on CD, I was very tempted to do the same for the Northwest, but I never took the time. I'm sure it was significant work. Leaving out your third regional hurts your score. Is that how it's done in Michigan, or do they count all the district events you do, average them, throw out the worst?

I really liked the Eastern Washington University facility for the regional. Big enough to hold everyone, but small enough to see it up close. I hope we have a chance to go there in the future.

Thanks to everyone for a great time. Now I need a little time for my finger nails to grow back before St. Louis! See ya next time.

-Bob