2016 Midwest Regional

[Jim Schaddelee]

Al,

I am planning on coming , The Midwest Regional was my first event I ever attended and hold a special place in my heart. That event was the seed that still drives Team 107 20 years later. The competition was crazy and the people I met I still consider friends. Are their any special events planned?


jim

Team 107 R.O.B.O.T.I.C.S.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

See you soon, Jim. Will you bring your dad?

[Jim Schaddelee]

I will try

[lynca]

Anyone willing to help upload robot pictures for the teams ?

https://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2016ilch

All of these pictures will appear on the TBA android app and make scouting easier.

[LeapsAndBowns]

I'm super excited!

Watch the 20th anniversary Midwest Regional on the FIRST Illinois website here. We updated our streaming equipment, so hopefully it will look great for those watching at home!

For those of you who want to share stories and photos from the event on social media, our official event hashtag is #MWR20.

FIRST Illinois is also getting some alumni together for an alumni social. All FIRST alumni in the area are welcome to join us (even if you didn't compete on an Illinois team). Our meetup will be Friday night at 7 pm at Wise Owl Drinkery and Cookhouse, just a few blocks away from the Pavilion. All ages are welcome and we hope to see you there!

[RonAyyyyyyyy]

After watching nearly every match, I have some lighthearted predictions based on today's rankings

1736-111-171 W
4143-2451-3695 F
3061-1756-4329 SF
2062-379-5822
2338-1625-101 SF
5847-4655-931
2151-375-4061
2781-1781-4241

2338 rejects 3061

[HaleStorm]

I am confused about quarterfinal match that alliance 5 just lost.

Why did Winovation's (1625) scale not count?

[RonAyyyyyyyy]

Originally Posted by HaleStorm

I am confused about quarterfinal match that alliance 5 just lost.

Why did Winovation's (1625) scale not count?

I believe their bumpers were not entirely above the line

[evanperryg]

Congratulations everyone on an incredible Midwest regional! I was blown away by how strong this event was this year, the field was deeper here than it has been in years! Congrats to 1736, 2451, and 3352 on the win, you guys put together a great alliance. A few shout-outs:

-111 and 4241: It was amazing to work with such an excellent pair of teams. We did everything we could and a special congrats to 4241 on their first-ever trip to champs!
-379: You guys definitely made the best of a terrible situation throughout all of quals. Please don't let the bad schedules skew your perspective on this event, I'd love to see you guys come back! Congratulations on winning Engineering Inspiration, and on having a great robot.
-5847: It has been a pleasure working with you throughout this season. You are, without a doubt, the most organized, most knowledgeable, and most promising rookie team I have ever seen. There is no doubt in my mind that you will continue your success in years to come.
-5934: Being able to see you guys learn and grow throughout this event was astounding. I hope our alums were helpful to you, and I'm excited to see you all next season!
-3695 and 101: two teams who were extremely under-appreciated. I was shocked to see the leaps and bounds of improvements both of these teams have made since 2015. 3695's high goal shot was beautiful, and their vision code was excellent, and 101's driver was a beast. I was genuinely surprised to see neither of these teams get picked for eliminations, they absolutely deserved a spot on the field this afternoon.

[Ryan Dognaux]

I had not been to the Midwest Regional since 2004 when I was a high school student on 234. Even after all these years, the Midwest Regional still knows how to put on one heck of a show. Congratulations on 20 years!

4329 had quite the event. Thursday and Friday we spent most of our time attempting to diagnose drive train problems. If you walked by our pit, you may have seen our drive sides off a couple of times - replacing CIM motors, replacing Talons, replacing 40 amp breakers. After finally finding a glitch in our software, our robot ran on 4 CIM's for the first time this year. Apparently we only ran on 2 CIM's during our entire 1st regional.

A big, big thanks to Nick Coussens and PWNAGE 2451 for letting us use 2 of their 3/8" Hex Bore Steel 14 tooth gears. In our final match on Friday, we sheered all of the teeth off our aluminum 14 tooth gears on one side of the drive. Without those gears we would have been dead in the water. Steel on aluminum for life now.

Coming out Saturday morning for our first match, the difference was astounding. After 4 solid qualification matches we went from 32nd to 9th. We've never had a more dramatic turnaround in ranking.

A huge thank you to our alliance partners 4096 and 171. We knew we would have an uphill battle against the #3 alliance and decided to focus on capturing the tower with low goals first. 4096's stellar defense slowed 1756 and 4143 enough to allow us and 171 to get more balls in the tower quicker. The same strategy didn't pan out against the #2 alliance, but I'm still very proud of what we were able to do with defense, a lot of low goals, a couple of high goals and a solid autonomous mode. Thanks for helping us have an amazing finish to a weekend that a day before had looked pretty grim for us.

We are on the wait list for Champs and will play at the Missouri Robotics State Championship in May with even more improvements to Trogdor.

Thanks to all of the teams and volunteers that made this event a complete joy to attend. We'd love to come back again.

Lastly - did anyone happen to record or capture the match videos from the stream? If anyone needs help breaking that video up and getting it onto The Blue Alliance, feel free to PM me.

[Mark Holschuh]

We really enjoyed watching the webcast. We especially liked the trivia questions, flashbacks to old matches and all of the personal tributes from past participants that were shown between matches. Great job by the Regional Planning Committee and all the volunteers that made that happen.

[mastachyra]

Team 2781 RoboPride wants to congratulate 1736, 2451 and 3352 on their great performance.

We also want to thank 2151 Monty Pythons for selecting us for eliminations and 2039 Rockford Robotics for being a great teammate. Both of our teams are on the rise after a few years striving for a playoff spot. I felt satisfied that our team and the whole alliance really did our best to put up a fight against the number 1 alliance.

Can't wait to see the qualifiers at champs and everyone at R2OC!

[Hadi379]

Team 379 would like to thank 3061, our alliance captain, for selecting us to compete with them and 4645 in the playoffs at the Midwest regional.

Congratulations to the winning alliance of 1736, 2451, and 3352.

We really enjoyed playing with so many teams that we've never met before:

2451 - We really enjoyed watching your robot play the game, for being a tall robot, you made the defenses look easy, your shooting was on target, and your hang was icing on the cake, especially with the 20pt end game.

111 - You may have been the best cycling robot at the event and I'm pretty sure you didn't miss a shot in auto from the spybot position

2338 - Congratulations on winning the Regional Chairman's Award and being Regional Finalists!! We spent alot of time together on the practice field fine tuning our shooters, Good luck at worlds, you also have a great robot!

4241 - Congrats on being Regional Finalists and earning a Championship Wildcard!!

To teams 111, 1625, 4143, 2451, and 2062, and all the CSA's at this regional. I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting someone, but I have to thank you for all the help you gave my team when it came to fixing our vision tracking issues. This was something that haunted us since week 3 at the Buckeye regional, and we were able to solve our problem with all your help. By our first match on saturday, we had everything working perfectly.

Also, this was our first trip to Midwest, a regional with a long history, 20yrs! My students went in thinking that we would be treated like outsiders, but it was the complete opposite and I thank you for this. They definitely enjoyed their visit, and are eager to return in the near future.

See you in St. Louis!!!

[SteveGarward]

Originally Posted by Hadi379

111 - You may have been the best cycling robot at the event and I'm pretty sure you didn't miss a shot in auto from the spybot position

1! We missed 1!!! Gah! I couldn't believe it. But I digress..

WildStang had a great time at the regional. Peoria was a tough one for us, with a number of small but impacting issues. But we addressed them all for Midwest and got the robot performing as we had hoped. That along with a lot more time for driver practice over the last two weeks saw us do very well indeed.

Thanks to our alliance partners 2338 and 4241 - we all played our role well every match, and we even put up the event high score! You were great to work with, and calm under pressure.

Congratulations to 1736, 2451 and 3352. You guys were always going to be hard to beat. Shout out to 3352 for some tough defense!

Thanks to all the other teams we played with as well. Every match, our alliances worked well to use our strengths to get the best match outcome we could.

Now, onwards and upwards to champs!