900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles

[JesseK]

When I learned about the 4 harpoons Friday evening, my instinctual reaction was "we've over-indulged on cheesecake". On the surface it just seems like we may as well get rid of the bags, tags and deadlines - just make build season 4 months (1/3 of our life) long. For teams who regularly attend Champs, that is what FRC has turned into and it doesn't look to change any time soon. The features and tuning race which takes energy to keep up with really escalated this year.

A bit later, I then thought "haters gonna hate", because I got 'it'. Finally, why the Simbots have no problem picking a team who has limited capabilities overall and may even be ranked dead last at an event - it's an oxymoron of selfishness and selflessness was hard for me to understand at first.

Making those 4 structures, tuning them and getting them perfect in 3 days so as to stay within withholding was a monumental task that shows the focus, dedication and selflessness that the Simbots have. With those harpoons, they could guarantee the choke hold strategy if they made it to Finals. They could also single-handedly take a team who has had a rough week and make their day. Rather than becoming an 'expected' middle-of-the-pack Champs experience, a team can take the story of the road to Einstein back to their school/community and propel their program forward. That is what a great team can do for the rest of FRC over time. It's something only the elite few can do. It is something to aspire to.

Originally Posted by meg

Regardless of what team chose us, we would have done our absolute best to do our most for that alliance. Part of the reason we didn't start disassembling our first robot until AFTER our last qualifying match was we didn't believe it would be fair to the teams we were competing with.

I agree with you wholeheartedly here. Thursday night, and Friday noon-ish we were discretely approached by the Poofs about frame geometry, coding, available ports, etc. They were obviously looking for a compatible cheesecake partner. On Friday we started getting good with our own strategy, meaning we had two options: continue down our current path, or sandbag in order to attempt to be available for the Poofs. Sandbagging was tempting - 'they're perfect' was overheard by me and another mentor. Yet it would have been major disrespect to to rest of my build team and our Friday partners for us to not play our absolute best with the robot we had.

Such is the life of a specialist on the serpentine draft system.