Team 254 Presents: Chezy Champs

[AdamHeard]

What a great event!

Everything about it was pleasant... it's just the little things that add up.

The match timing was hectic, which is common for CA offseasons... but usually we're not playing such good teams every match and have more room to breath!

I hope everyone enjoyed me embarrassing myself in a "Bro-Tank", my team always comments I take things too seriously so I figure if there was any event to be Chezy it was this one. I apologize for anyone suffering from eye damage due to the paleness.

As for our performance, I think it is a great reminder to our students (and other teams) that the phrase , "Fail to plan, plan to fail" is always true. A lot of little details were overlooked going into the event, and these add up to bite you. This combined with the completely unforseeable failure of driveshafts made us play awful. I know my student leaders will learn a great deal from this painful lesson. I hope no one gets offended by this, but winning a non-champs event as a 3rd is not how 973 would like to win events.

As for our drive failures, we started snapping our gearbox output shafts (3CIM ballshifter we turned to .5" round then milled to 7/16" hex, snapped at that junction) at this event and ran out of spares Sunday morning. We actually didn't even have spares made, we just pulled them from practice bot. Similar geometry hasn't failed on us before, so this was scary. This game is far more intense than previous years though. The same shafts did last our 2nd regional and champs for reference. This combined was terrifying to us as we couldn't predict when they'd break again (as some had lasted several events, some had lasted 3 matches). If we broke another in elims we'd have to be subbed out.

For other small and combined reasons, we weren't able to reliably shoot top goal or truss (there was a time lag on the truss release, which made aiming to the HP very difficult). We also were bending frame in a way that made our intake incapable of picking up balls in most matches. All of these will be fixed of course!

I warned most of the alliance captains I could find, because 973 is very conservative when drafting teams, as I would appreciate knowing such risks about potential picks.

We very much appreciate our buddies on 1678 and 254 taking chance on us, I guess it was easier for their alliance to take the risk for two reasons. First, they were darn good. Second, they knew the next seeded team was 114, who was likely the quality of their non-973 options anyway. So if we died, they'd have a decent replacement.

For those accusing us of being deceptive, we're just as good of friends with 971 as the above teams, and they chose to PASS on us knowing the risks we had. If I were any of the alliance captains, I likely would not have picked us (except maybe in 1678's spot, knowing 114 was the backup). I'm glad we broke no shafts in elims, as it would have been very upsetting to us to let others down.

We are also grateful to teams 4543 and 5136 for allowing our scouts to work with you for alliance selections. Our students were bummed that the scouting they practiced wouldn't be useful for guiding picks for 973, so being able to discuss and have some input with picks of other teams was a cool experience for them. Sounds like some of the students made some new friends out of it too.

Watch out for 5136 in the future, they're a team that gets it. They work within their means and are looking to also increase their resources. I'm excited for their potential.

Overall it was a well run event and lots of fun. The humor the Paul/Karthik combo brought along with the reduced seriousness of the event was a nice change of pace compared to the typical event. I hope (and expect!) an even bigger and better Chezy Champs next year!