Favorite moments from Recycle Rush

[Clem1640]

For me, it was getting to Archimedes Finals as alliance captain. Alas, no visit to Einstein this year.

Prior to this year, we had been alliance captain during official FRC events exactly twice (in ten years). This year, we were alliance captain in 3 of our 4 events.

[Ginger Bread]

Originally Posted by marcusbernstein

When our team was in first place towards the end of day one, even though we didn't have a working robot in any of our matches. (I am the noodle throwing human player) and had at least one 40 point match.

I did almost the same thing, but i only had about 30 points and we weren't in 1st.

[Wayne Doenges]

My favorite moments:
Winning the very first Indiana District event
Being nominated for the WFA
Receiving the EI award at the Indiana State Championship
Making it to the Semi's at CMP
Stacking all 6 Yellow Totes for Co-Op during one match

[CadetGizmo]

Originally Posted by mastachyra

Implying that there were no great moments from Recycle Rush is ridiculous. You must not be a fan of FIRST. Here is my favorite, but their were many to choose from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=67&v=bwuYfa8TS60

F2 on Einstein. The can grab battle between 118 and 987 at the start was the single best thing I saw all year. At least 10,000 people gasped at the same time. It was my first time at the world championships, and it was amazing.

What was the final score of that match?? Can't find it anywhere.

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by CadetGizmo

What was the final score of that match?? Can't find it anywhere.

203 (Red) - 246 (Blue)

[tr6scott]

https://youtu.be/Ai4AiWz7680

Waterford finals 2,

Our tape measure can retrieval. When just the ability to retrieve a can, was the thing, not the speed. The mechanism was not working or programmed when we walked in on Thursday, but by alliance selection it did, and was flawless.

The tipping point of being HOT's first pick.

We left the can in the only orientation they could not pick up... upside down, they had to knock it over to pick it up. We doing the, build your stack on top of a tote at the feeder station..

Ramps would be all the rage next week.

Match ends with our First blue banner of the year, soon followed by two more, ranked 3rd in the state of Michigan, 3rd alliance captain on Tesla, Finalist on Tesla, pushing the end of the season to 3 matches.

A year where we continually out kicked the coverage, and it started here...

(Ready to do it again)

[GKrotkov]

Well, here's a selfish one:
All of the Springside-Chestnut Hill district. Team 1712 rode our coopertition points strategy to the 5th seed, and had to put together a pick list. This was only the 2nd time I had to do this as 1712's scouting lead, but I thought that we had done a pretty solid job*. Curiously, we ended up selecting two teams that we had allied with at SCH 2014: 4373 and 3974. At SCH 2014, that alliance pulled off a 3-match upset of the #1 alliance and took the eventual winners of the event to 3 matches, but lost. Note, the captain of that alliance was FRC 225, TechFire. Back to SCH 2015: TechFire had ranked #1 and looked to be in prime position to take the event without much challenge. As I walked off the field after alliance selection, I mentioned to Dawgma's programming lead (now co-captain) that "I hope we get the chance to lose to TechFire again, 'cause at least that would mean we make finals." As it turned out, our scouting was better than just solid: 4373 and 3974 were on point. As one of my more dedicated scouts put it: "4373 and 3974 have big backpacks - they can fit our entire team." I don't have the paper on me at the moment, but I remember doing a manual scoring for each team after the event, and it showed 1712 actually contributing least to our alliance (in terms of straight points, ignoring HP noodles). 3974 and 4373 were so good, in fact, that they ended up bringing Dawgma all the way on our first trip to the finals in team history. My wish had come true; we had the honor of losing to 225, 1218, and 204 in the finals.

* seeing my mentors figure stuff about how alliance selection would shake out in <5 seconds that would take me minutes, if I had ever been able to put it together, was downright inspiring, by the way.

Some less selfish ones:
1) Seeing 1023's alliance make finals on Archimedes after a 43 point match was shocking. I can't think of a more stunning reversal.
2) Team 1089, 365, and 423, the 6th alliance at MAR Champs, coming ever so close to the semifinals, with an alliance based on 1089 capping 423/365's stacks. I have a soft spot for teams that play this game that way - I so wanted specialists to be viable for this game, but it just didn't happen.
3) Looking back at this strategically deep game and seeing that more of its potential was realized than we think, from non-six stack teams being highly competitive (see 1218's champs alliance), to cappers mattering (see 27's champs alliance), to alliances w/o can dominance being competitive on Einstein (Archimedes champs).

[GeeTwo]

A couple of playoff favorite moments:

At Bayou, when Robin threw a noodle over the defensive net:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/at...5&d=1427283531

The falling stack during Carson QF4 - I was yelling my head off not to put that stack down on top of a noodle, but I was way up in the nosebleed section babysitting a Grouch costume.

Another one, along a personal/team line :
Being asked into alliance by 3937 and 3039: the first time our season didn't end before lunch on Saturday.

Life was rather surreal between making Bayou playoffs and winning Bayou. The next couple of hours, when we were trying to figure out how to get the robot in a bag that could fit in a crate heading to St. Louis was personally the most stressful (and therefore favorite from a masochistic standpoint) moment. We managed to get the robot minimally disassembled and temporarily framed up so as to fit in a crate in far too short a time. And THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to our traditional cross-town football rivals, Team Combustion 1912, for loaning us a bag and a tag!

[Jack S.]

Saturday at the Utah Regional. Going in the morning we were seeded first but we knew that our elims alliance would need step cans to win. Standard cheesecake situation, other than the fact that we hadn't brought a pre-made mechanism to quickly attach to our third bit after alliance selections. Thankfully, we had spent some time hanging out with ATA in the hotel the night before, and they had a perfect platform for a 610 style burglar. However, we knew that the other alliances would catch on to what we were doing and pick 4334 on the way back up the draft. The plan was for me to wash out my green hair, put on ATA gear, and work Saturday morning as a member of their team, helping design the mechanism and prep the bot, while 624 pit crew members used our drawings and measurements to fabricate the burglar, all with zero physical interaction.

Seeing what was stock tubing less than 3 hours before function exactly how we wanted it to during our first QF was one of the greatest feelings I've had since I have been involved in FIRST.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KXivfs2nzKQ

The whole "undercover" thing may have been a little overkill, but it was a heck of a lot of fun. Plus, I got a sweet hoodie out of the deal.

[tr6scott]

Originally Posted by GKrotkov

Well, here's a selfish one:
1) Seeing 1023's alliance make finals on Archimedes after a 43 point match was shocking. I can't think of a more stunning reversal.
(Archimedes champs).

Yes, that was amazing. I counted them out that... but so glad I was wrong once more.

[Anupam Goli]

Not my favorite game, but definitely my favorite moments in FIRST happened this year. Back in week 1, our team won a regional event for the very first time. For the past few years, the team had been getting better and better, trying to get a bid to the world championship, and it finally happened. The kids on the team finally got what they worked so hard for.

My second favorite moment of RR was coming back from worlds. Every single one of our students came out of the dome a different student than when we went into the dome. As a mentor, hearing students talking about everything they saw and learned and how we can improve is music to my ears. The team's evolving to the next stage, thanks to our accomplishments in Recycle Rush.

[JackFisher]

I could tell you my least favorite match: quarterfinal 4-1 in Carson division...

[John Retkowski]

About 5 minutes after our second quarterfinals match at the MAR district championship. Our first match went very poorly, with our alliance scoring around 84 points. Afterwards the drive team went back to the pits. We all just sat there not saying anything. Then we went into the second match and scored 212 points. We managed to pull ourselves up, and our alliance kept dominating throughout the rest of eliminations.

Seeing that 212 point score felt pretty good.

[GeeTwo]

This one's completely team-centric, and I just missed my previous post by a few minutes, but it's worth stating:

We were picked as #23 at Bayou; we had ranked #42. Without cheesecaking, we performed the oddball job that our alliance captain selected us for in every last match throughout quarters, semis, and finals, and (over and above that) contributed to alliance success. That is, we mined our way through the landfill to deliver the right-most RC so that our alliance partners could score it on their fourth stack - every match. In quite a few of our matches, our own robot and HP scores more than represented the margin of victory. While we heartily thank 3937 and 3039 for selecting us, we can be fully proud that the alliance needed our contribution to win.

[waialua359]

If I can try and take 1 positive from this past year's game, it was virtually having NO defense.
With 2 of our 3 drive team members being new this year, and the other veteran graduating, it's a great gradual break-in for going back to trying to achieve game objectives WITH defense this upcoming season...