Positive Experiences with Dominant Teams

[mlantry]

this year at championships on practice day i had some time so i walked around and came across 16's pit and started a conversation with one of the people there about there swerve drive and their 30 point climber (not on the robot anymore). me and this guy had at least a 25 minute conversation even though everyone was busy working. it was great

[Mrcope9]

Our rookie year (2012) turned out to be one of the greatest learning expiriences we have ever come across. On the first day at the Bayou Regional, an inspector told us our robot was 1/4 inch too big on two sides, which meant we had to cut our robot down and rebuild in in less than two days. BUT, based on some great pit location, we made friends with several older, well respected teams from texas. First team 418: thank you for letting us use your space & tools to test our robot. You all tought us a lot about programming on the fly. Second, team 624: after finding out that our code had been lost, your mentors came & sat in our pit for hours on that miserable Thursday evening. Your spirit and guidence made a world of difference to all of our members. We were trully dissapointed when your team wasn't at the Bayou Regional this year. Lastly, to our friends team 57: i think your years of expirience was the best medicine for a case of bad luck. Thank you for helping us make new bumpers, and for letting us pick your brains on how to make the regional a better place. You all even gave us our first award. It read, "For proving Murphy's Law, team 3991" it was a bit satirical, but we fully cherished it. That small token of your appreciation, plus the big stuffed leopard are still sitting in our lab. We modeled our second season after you, and went from 35th in 2012 to 19th and a tournament spot in 2013. We trully can't wait to compete with you all in the future.

Thanks again to all those teams who brought smiles to our faces at some point!

[LeelandS]

Oh goodness... Well. I got the pleasure to work with 610 for the first time at the 2012 Rah Cha Cha Ruckus. Nick Lawrence, Mr. Lim, and the rest of the team really are an amazing bunch. They are clearly just so excited to be a part of the program.

Um... Let's see here. I got to work with 118 for the first time this past year at Champs. Their coach, Mason (The Man of the Amazing Mustache, for those of you who don't know) and the student drive team and the couple of team members I ran into in their pits are awesome. Mason is an extremely friendly guy, and the students are very open. Even as I praised their robot (something they've undoubtedly heard time and time again), they seemed as though they had heard it for the first time.

I got to work with 233 and 2016 in the elimination rounds of IRI in 2011, that was certainly an honor. Both really cool teams who obviously enjoy the competition.

I don't get to pal around with the 1114 crew as much as I would like (they certainly like to stick North of the border; maybe since Finger Lakes is rumored to be moving away from the earlier weeks of competition, to Week 4 I believe, they will finally make the trip to Rochester), but Karthik is fun to hang around with.

Generally, you'll find most dominant teams to be really friendly. I hypothesize this is true because the foundation of a strong team is getting the students and mentors to really believe in the program. And if you can really get into a program like ours, then you will definitely be excited and having fun at every FIRST event. The closest thing to a bad experience with a powerhouse team I've had is most likely me mistaking their professionalism as grumpiness.

[rick.oliver]

Great Thread, thanks for the opportunity to publicly acknowledge these teams:

About a year ago, I accepted an invitation to become the Lead Mentor for 4028, a second year team. The FIRST thing I did was to PM a few other team leaders and ask for advise on how to establish a FIRST culture on a new team. I got immediate, sound and consistent advise from 111, 365 and 1114.

As the build season progressed, I contacted 48 (on several occasions) on several specific questions. Always received timely, direct and wise counsel.

During competition:

at Queen City 379 gave us a pneumatic part that enabled us to pass inspection and compete.

at Crossroads, we experienced an issue with our motor controllers. The LRI a mentor from 45 spent significant time with us trouble shooting, diagnosing and resolving the issue.

Finally, I will share a letter we wrote to 1114 when I was the Machine Team leader with 1038:

"On behalf of FIRST FRC Team 1038, I want to express our sincere appreciation for the support 1114 provided us at the Pittsburgh Regional and beyond, especially the perseverance in trying to help us use your MINIBOT. I’m sure that you are as disappointed as we were that we were unable to get it deployed. We learned at lot from having the opportunity to be pitted across from you and watching how you approach the competition process. It was also fun watching and then competing in the Elimination matches. 1114 continues to set the standard for execution and I appreciate being able to measure our progress against the standard that 1114 has set. You have consistently epitomized the concept of coopertition and live the values of FIRST; specifically, gracious professionalism.

Your willingness to share your MINIBOT drawings combined with your open exchange of information about your deployment system, both during the Pittsburgh Regional and since, allowed us to retrofit our machine to reapply both your MINIBOT and deployment system at the Buckeye Regional. We successfully deployed (y)our MINIBOT in all of our nine Qualifying Matches and each of our five Elimination Matches; achieving first place in at least ten of those matches and never lower than second. We were able to construct three MINIBOTs. We used one and shared one with another team during all of the qualification matches. During the Elimination matches we retrofitted our alliance partner to accept the third MINIBOT. Hence, all three of (y)our MINIBOTs were used in the Elimination rounds. As a result, we earned the Coopertition Award at Buckeye. We also finished the Qualification rounds undefeated.

I know that you are as pleased with our success, perhaps more so, than we are. 1114 may take great pride in knowing how much your support has helped us – this year and previous years, too. I was very pleased to see that you have been recognized with another Regional Chairman’s Award; 1114 continues to earn that distinction and I look forward to congratulating you on a Championship Chairman’s Award very soon."

[cadandcookies]

At the 2012 North Star Regional, my team was back to back with Wildstang. I don't have any stories of abnormal kindness, but they did let us use their portable bandsaw more than once. And then they wiped the floor with everyone. Seeing how nice and utterly classy they were while still dominating was very inspirational.

Another example would be at champs this year, I ran into some guys from 254 in their Hall of Fame booth. They were scheduled to leave fairly shortly, but we talked for like a half hour about prototyping and team structure. They gave me a very cool insight into how a perennial powerhouse is run.

[CalTran]

I've always had great experiences with team 1986, Team Titanium. They're always out there and spirited, and incredibly supportive of every team at their competitions. We've especially taken our fair share of their Nuts and Bolts shop multiple times, and each time they've really saved some part of our robot from falling apart! They're fun to be with, their open house is really mind blowing, and they're quick to jump into another team should the so much as mention in passing that they're having problems.

[KrazyCarl92]

Our last qualification match at IRI this year was with 1114, Simbotics. Planning for it on Friday night, we realized that it was quite likely that Simbotics would be in the running for the top seed going into this match. Because our robot had broken on Friday and did not operate properly for any of our 6 qualification matches that day, we were 0-6 going into Saturday. Our priority was to showcase our robot's capabilities so we could possibly stand a chance at being selected. Obviously Simbotics priority was winning the match to stay undefeated and seed #1. In the end, they would have seeded number 1 anyway with a 8-1 record, but going into the match strategy discussion it wasn't necessarily clear.

When speaking with Simbotics, they were very receptive to our desire to look good in the interest of getting selected. We knew we had to do what we could as alliance partners to help win the match for them, but for us looking good was the key. Our autonomous went well and we were able to hang, but unfortunately our collector jammed when getting hit by 234 after only 2 trips to the pyramid to shoot, rendering our teleop performance less than impressive.

Simbotics also did something very awesome in our strategy discussion. They admitted that they were likely to miss some of their shots. At IRI, some teams had an illusion that their shooting accuracy was 100%. Not a single team shot at 100%. Only a few even shot above 90%. It is strategically important to be realistic about one's own performance. Many people simply stated that there would be fewer discs on the floor at IRI because the teams were better. However, teams doing 6 cycles at 80% accuracy will on average leave the same number of missed shots on the floor as teams doing 3 cycles at 60% accuracy. We got push back from some teams about employing a floor loading strategy, likely because they did not understand this concept and how it can apply even at high levels of play (admittedly it is situational). 1114 understood that this floor loading strategy made sense for achieving both goals of us trying to look good and working together to win the match.

The way Simbotics kept their eye on the prize of maximizing their chances of winning, but still were considerate of our desire to showcase our abilities is something I really appreciate. That is what FIRST is all about: gracious professionalism.

Congrats on the second straight IRI win to you and your alliance, very well deserved!

[Celia]

Again, too many to count, but there are three that really stick out to me:

469 - This season, our robot lost connection with the field at the beginning of one of our final matches. Their mentor (Dan?) was volunteering at this offseason competition and helped us on and off the field. He came back to our pits to offer advice and several suggestions to what went wrong, and I know we all appreciated it. It was a stressful day and that act of kindness made a lot of our team smile.

33 - I worked on animation for the 2012 season, and needed a lot of help. Their chairman's video maker, Jonathon, sat with me at states for at least two hours helping me with everything he could. His tips and advice helped my friend and I make much prettier and realistic models.

461 - Animation again. Their programmer Anand sat with my fellow animator and I and worked through an issue we'd been having for weeks. Later, we got in contact again and he provided a new look on our problems, as well as solutions.

In summary, having a knowledgeable, kind teammate who reaches out to other teams really does make a great impression. Thank you!

[OWilliamson]

This year I was in Kansas City for a while, so I contacted 1986 Team Titanium to see if I could visit them. They happily said yes, and I was able to spend 2 whole hours with them. They talked with me about how their team is structured and functions as well as explaining almost every little detail of their last few robots. They were incredibly open about everything and they taught me a ton in the time I was there. I know that my experience with them is going to benefit my team immensely in the coming years, and I couldn't thank them enough.

Plus they gave me a shirt which was awesome

[AluminumNarwhal]

At this year's San Diego Regional my team's robot was almost fully functional. There were some quirks in our shooter that we didn't anticipate. 987, who had a very similar shooting mechanism, spent about a quarter of an hour with us after the regional had concluded and gave us advice about how to stabilize it. Our following regional, we had the highest-scoring robot in our team's history. Thank you 987 for donating your time even in the chaos of the pits closing.

[AmoryG]

125 mentored my team in our rookie season and some of their members helped us out at Championships after we won Rookie All-stars at our regional (thanks in no small part to their mentoring). They host the Beantown Blitz off-season event, volunteer at the Boston Regional (I'm sure they're very helpful at the other regionals they attend), and have probably jump started many other teams besides my own. It's a shame I haven't had more experiences with other dominant teams because I'm sure there a bunch out there that are just as great as 125.

And if you want to hear about positive experiences with dominant teams look no further than members and alumni of dominant teams. I'm sure many of them will tell you what a joy it was to be part of such a great team and how their experiences as members positively shaped their lives and careers.