Canadian supremacy

[Walter Deitzler]

Canada reigned supreme on an international level this year. They had 5/7 winners of major international events (IRI+Champs) this past year, 2/3 world champs, 3/4 IRI champs. Not only that, but none of the IRI winners won champs, and vice-versa.

What makes them so good? Is it the collective drive to get good enough to beat the powerhouses? Does FIRST Canada have a really good mentoring program? Does all of that maple syrup make them somehow super robot-minded? Did the new wildcard system present many new opportunities for them? What is it that makes these guys so good?

[ErvinI]

Originally Posted by LedLover96

What makes them so good?

Is it the collective drive to get good enough to beat the powerhouses?
Does FIRST Canada have a really good mentoring program?
Does all of that maple syrup make them somehow super robot-minded?
Did the new wildcard system present many new opportunities for them?

I think all four of those reasons pushed Canada to the top this year.

[connor.worley]

Not to diminish Canadian teams, but I think the 1st seed won IRI this year because they came into elims with a very strong strategy in mind, and the best teams available to execute it were Canadian. 1334 carried that alliance. When someone runs an FCS, you have to defend against it. Teams at IRI sent a support bot with their FCS to cancel out the defense, so effectively you have a 2v2 matchup. However, 1334 was able to turn the situation back into a 3v2 when they climbed and dumped in the endgame. Very well played.

There was a set of Canadian teams that were all good at specific things, but their strength as an alliance was greater than the sum of the parts.

[1683cadder]

It's the mounties. don't forget the mounties.

[Nemo]

Canada succeeds for all of the usual reasons, plus they have Tim Horton's doughnuts, whereas in the U.S. we mostly don't.

[George C]

Thanks for all the kind words and best wishes particularly after our hard dismount. Our thanks to 1114 and 2056 for picking us for the alliance and to 2337 for their great work. Our thanks as well to the IRI organizers. A particularly well run event. Ask nicely and we'll bring you something from Timmy's next year. The way they're expanding there might even be a store in Indy by then.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

I'd love to hear some teams from the Toronto area comment on this. It's pretty clear these teams are improving at a rate which isn't matched by any other locality.

[Walter Deitzler]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

I'd love to hear some teams from the Toronto area comment on this. It's pretty clear these teams are improving at a rate which isn't matched by any other locality.

Agreed. I would like to hear from some of these successful Toronto teams. I would think this would NOT be Canada's year, after the Ontario teacher's strike. What is up with this astounding growth?

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by LedLover96

Agreed. I would like to hear from some of these successful Toronto teams. I would think this would NOT be Canada's year, after the Ontario teacher's strike. What is up with this astounding growth?

I've actually heard from a few Toronto teams that the teacher strike actually helped them improve as a team.

[Jim Wilks]

Originally Posted by mman1506

I've actually heard from a few Toronto teams that the teacher strike actually helped them improve as a team.

That is definitely true in our case.

[cad321]

Team 2386 from Burlington, Ontario (about 40 minutes South West of Toronto), although not a powerhouse team such as 1114, 2056 or 610 has most definitely been motivated by the powerhouses. Without these teams we would not be required to work so hard just to be able to qualify for Worlds. These teams make it so that other Ontario teams need to aim to do things that many other teams just don't need to because they don't have powerhouses near them forcing them to do any better. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely teams all over the world that strive towards making the best robot they can to perform best at worlds. That being said, why do more work than you need to if the motivation isn't there.

Also the teachers strike (although making things more challenging) certainly helped motivate us. We were the only extra-curricular running (technically a class but was really an extra-curricular) and needed to not only represent our school but show our peers that robotics was more than a bunch of nerds getting together to do lame, nerdy things. The strike also sent more teachers wanting to continue helping after school to come to our program and mentor. This gave us even more qualified help (on top of the amazing teachings that come from our mentors in industry).

The timmies and maple syrup clearly help as well .

[Pault]

Originally Posted by cad321

Team 2386 from Burlington, Ontario (about 40 minutes South West of Toronto), although not a powerhouse team such as 1114, 2056 or 610 has most definitely been motivated by the powerhouses. Without these teams we would not be required to work so hard just to be able to qualify for Worlds. These teams make it so that other Ontario teams need to aim to do things that many other teams just don't need to because they don't have powerhouses near them forcing them to do any better. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely teams all over the world that strive towards making the best robot they can to perform best at worlds. That being said, why do more work than you need to if the motivation isn't there.

I can definitely see this as a big part of why Canada is so successful. Even though there are other teams out there who strive to be the best, its different in Canada. Why? Because teams build a robot to accomplish their goal for the season, and robot that was built with the goal of making it to elims will tend to turn out different than one with the goal to win on Einstein. For example, nearly every powerhouse team did not settle for a pure cycler. They knew that in order to maximize their chances of winning on Einstein, they needed to do more.* In Canada, because of 1114 and 2056, if you want to win a regional, you are going to have to aim higher than most powerhouse teams. Because of that, they are ending up with more and more teams trying to go above and beyond with floor pickups, 30pt climbs, etc. And the ones who opt to just cycle are going to try their very hardest to create a worthy cycler.

So, thank you to 1114 and 2056. Despite people complaining about how you hog all of the glory to yourself, there were people out there who knew that you were just pushing the rest of Ontario to it's limits. And this year, we can finally see that it worked. Because of you, FRC is a much better competition.

*Someone is going to come at me and say that 3 cyclers won on einstein, but 2 of them had floor pickups, and the finalists only had 1 robot that cycled: 469: arguably the team with the biggest bag of tricks this year.

[Jonathan Norris]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

I'd love to hear some teams from the Toronto area comment on this. It's pretty clear these teams are improving at a rate which isn't matched by any other locality.

To be honest I don't think the 2nd tier Canadian teams were that much better then in years past, if you go back in the last 4 years teams like 1241, 188, 610, 781 and others have all had strong showings at Champs. It's just that because of the wildcard system more of our good 2nd tier teams got to compete at champs, you all got to see how good 1310, 1334, 4039 and others are too (we also got a bit of luck this year ). It's incredible how well Canadians did this year, but then again I always knew that we have a great depth of teams from how strong our regionals are.

I have to give a ton of credit to Mark Breadner and all the Canada FIRST staff and volunteers for the support network they have built, but 1114 and 2056 being the best in the world gave us all great teams to emulate and strive to beat.

[krystasaurusrex]

As a member of Team 3161 from Oakville, Ontario, I can honestly say that my team is driven to excellence by the power house teams. Because so many qualification spots were taken by teams 1114 and 2056 up until this year, we have always been driven to not only try and mimic what these teams do (in terms of outreach and the robot) but we try to surpass them. We also love to work together to create something better, in 2012 I can honestly say we would have done as well as we did without the help of teams 2056 and 1114.

[ErvinI]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

To be honest I don't think the 2nd tier Canadian teams were that much better then in years past, if you go back in the last 4 years teams like 1241, 188, 610, 781 and others have all had strong showings at Champs. It's just that because of the wildcard system more of our good 2nd tier teams got to compete at champs, you all got to see how good 1310, 1334, 4039 and others are too (we also got a bit of luck this year ). It's incredible how well Canadians did this year, but then again I always knew that we have a great depth of teams from how strong our regionals are.

Out of the top tier of Ontario teams, only 1310 benefited from a wild card. 1241 and 1334 both won EI's (with 1334 also winning the Western Canadian Regional), while 4039 got in from the waitlist, I believe.