Notes from Sacramento - Awsome Upset.

It was a Blast - St. Francis - the legendary team that had their robot built for them during the competition two years ago was in the winning alliance that defeated the mighty Cheesy Poofs! I drove up Saturday, so didn't see the Friday comp. As a result of the large number of matches for each robot, there was a lot of busted machines by the end of Friday night. I think all but 2 or 3 were able to run on Saturday.


An alliance led by 692 and 662 with simpler fast, smaller robots, out-drove and out-pushed an alliance led by 295 and 254 to win. I didn't see a lot of stacking during the seeding or elimination. Just too much effort to make or defend a stack, and too easy to smash or clean out all the boxes from an opponent zone with a fast, small robot. Most of the teams that did well in the finals had some sort of brake or mechanism to help them stay on the ramp. Autonomy is real important in seeding, but not so much in the finals. It doesn't matter if you get all 29 boxes to your side if your opponents can push'em all off the field, and then knock you off the hill. Likewise the ability to go under did not appear that valuable. The highest seeding score occurred when one or both robots on one side were disabled and the teams had an agreement to run-up both scores. Other WRRF veterans who did well were MVRT, Los Altos and Woodside.
One benefit of a small regional - all but 3 teams were in the finals.

[Cory]

254 was actually with the #1 seed 599 and team 256. Team 295 was with the second seed 115 and 376. as I noted in another thread, Sacramento was excellent practice for all who attending. We basically have two regionals worth of experience now. I was very very excited to see someone take down the Cheesy Poofs who seem invincible to many.

Cory

[Warren Boudreau]

Thanks for the update. I've been trying to find the scores and ranking for the Sacramento regional, but they haven't been posted yet.

Very interesting results.

[Ken Leung]

I am some what to blame for not having the ranking/results up for the Sac regional.

We were too busy cleaning up and packing after the finals ended, and didn't have a chance to upload the score to FIRST.

Depending on what happened, I will upload the scores and ranking at Arizona on Thursday.

I can tell you the alliances for winner and finalist right now:

Winner to the Sacramento regional:
692, 662, 1147

Finalist:

559, 254, 256

[Mr. Van]

I'm sorry, but I couldn't let the errors in this thread continue.

The #1 alliance (chosen by top seeded team, 599) was:

599, 254 & 256 (thanks, teams!)

We were beaten by

692, 662 & 1147

Yes, considering the apparent strengths of both 599 and 254, the finals were an upset. Congratulations to Fembots, Rocky Mtn. Robotics and Herd Robotics!

The Sacramento Regional was by far the best FIRST event I have been at to date. A total blast. We look forward to seeing teams at Southern California and Houston.

-Mr. Van
Coach, Team 599
RoboDox
Granada Hills, CA

[Mr. Van]

I'd like to add my thanks to Ken for doing a fantastic job at Sacramento. I hope you didn't take my post as a criticism. I know it is easy for sleep-deprived fingers to miss-type!

-Mr. Van

[Ken Leung]

Originally posted by Mr. Van
I'd like to add my thanks to Ken for doing a fantastic job at Sacramento. I hope you didn't take my post as a criticism. I know it is easy for sleep-deprived fingers to miss-type!

-Mr. Van

Do not worry about it. Thanks for correcting the mistakes. I am glad you and your team had a good time at the regional. You guys did really really well, and being #1 seed and finalist out of teams of 27 is not an easy accomplishment.

[SpaceOsc]

ummm upset... at sac

i wanted to see the regional but was disapointed after finding out there werent going to broacast it

i knew cheesy poof and the robodox were gonna go far contrags
congrats to the regional champs !!!!!

anyways does any one have the final matches on video and even better does anyone have them online?


i really wanna c so if anyone knows about online recording of the matches at sac plz tell me hahaha tell everyone !!!!!

thanks,

-Oscar-

[Ken Leung]

Team 481 De Anza High School recorded all the matches, and is in the process of digitizing them. It should be done in a few days, and I will talk to them about publishing them.

I know they were planning on making copies for teams at the Sacramento.

A couple of folks have commented to me that I seem too happy that the Poofs lost. That is not true. I expect them to win at the San Jose regional and I will be very surprised if they don't win their division at the Nationals. I certainly will be cheering for them. In FIRST it isn't about who won and who came in second, it is about how well the game is played and the Poofs always play very well.

The Cheesy Poofs are a wonderful team and have been an anchor for the WRRF. I believe they won the Chairman's Award for Sacramento, and it was well deserved. They helped mentor several rookies, provided a great pre-shipping scrimmage event, and provided a well equipped mobile machine shop for Sacramento. The Poofs are the prime example of Gracious Professionalism, I think they have won almost every regional they ever competed in.

So I am not happy that the Poofs came in second at Sacramento, I was happy that the competitions was so wonderful.

[Eric Reed]

Yup...481 will be making CD's for every team. They will have most of your matches, plus any awards you may have won. If you want to make sure we have your address, send it to: media@mrreed (with .com on the end)

A couple of notes:

We didn't get a really good audio or video recording. The video feed was bad (nothing we could do about it), and our audio recording was bad (our fault, but we realized it too late). Nonetheless, the matches are watchable.

We will be finishing the CD's after we get back from New York, so you should expect them by the end of the month. If anyone has a need to get their's sooner, send me a note.

Next year we're going to make a supreme effort to distribute the CD's before you leave...and get the audio right.

Thanks for a great regional!

Eric.

[Greg Powers]

congradulates own team on awsome proformence being one of 2 bots at the reginal to sucessfully stack bins!!!
and we look like a peice of funiture!!!
and we got "leadership in control" award so we can now go to nationals!!!

"thumbs up for megaforce" TEAM 814!!!!

[Kevin A]

I am on team 481, and i would be willing to put the videos on my server. I have 20 gigs of space, so thats not a problem, although the conection isn't the fastest.

Will talk to Mr. Reed (.com???) tomorrow.

Kevin Antaki

[Alaina]

Exactly what Greg said, only with good grammar, spelling and punctuation!!

We're proud to have a bot that's decorated with wood stain and ugly upholstry!!

It was so great when Mark Leon stuck his head in between the claws before that one match...

[SteveKyramarios]

Originally posted by Dr.Bot
A couple of folks have commented to me that I seem too happy that the Poofs lost. That is not true.

Alan,

Thanks for your kind words. The Sac Regional was absolutely wonderful and our team had a blast. Congratulations to the winning alliance (692, 662 & 1147) and to all attending teams who made this "first year regional" a great success.