What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?

[AWoL]

First off, let me sincerely thank 1114 and 195 for picking us and 1405 for being awesome alliance partners at IRI. We loved working with all of you and it was an incredible experience for our team. In addition to that, it certainly felt like a milestone for our team. I've been around since 2014, when 225 wasn't quite on the level it is today, but nevertheless had pretty good results. However, last year we had seniors graduate who remembered our 2012 season, which is a night-and-day difference when compared to our performance in the last two years. I'm incredibly proud of how far we've come and I'm thankful that I've been able to contribute to 225's growing success.

As such, I love digging around the Blue Alliance team histories that show interesting changes in performance and finding out about what caused those changes. What teams do you think have improved the most in the shortest amount of time, and, if you know, what were the driving factors?

[thatprogrammer]

2056 went from not existing (2006) to picking 1114 as the #1 seed at the Toronto regional (2007). This is probably because they went from not being a team to being a team (Note, 2056 actually did a bunch of great practices in their rookie year that I spoke to them about. PM me or *even better* someone on 2056 so you can find out about them).

971 wasn't *that* good before 2009 and really wasn't at their current level until 2012. They went from seeding decently at tough regionals to seeding very well at events like the modern SVR (and I don't know anyone who would deny that 971 is a team that was good enough to win world's in 2014 or this year but had some bad luck at world's). I spoke to Wyn Schuh at World's quite a bit this year and she said that their success really just started because of experience and learning what works and what doesn't work. Lots of their former students and members still support their team as mentors and use their years of experience to guide the team and keep it very focused.

[jajabinx124]

Originally Posted by AWoL

First off, let me sincerely thank 1114 and 195 for picking us and 1405 for being awesome alliance partners at IRI. We loved working with all of you and it was an incredible experience for our team. In addition to that, it certainly felt like a milestone for our team. I've been around since 2014, when 225 wasn't quite on the level it is today, but nevertheless had pretty good results. However, last year we had seniors graduate who remembered our 2012 season, which is a night-and-day difference when compared to our performance in the last two years. I'm incredibly proud of how far we've come and I'm thankful that I've been able to contribute to 225's growing success.

As such, I love digging around the Blue Alliance team histories that show interesting changes in performance and finding out about what caused those changes. What teams do you think have improved the most in the shortest amount of time, and, if you know, what were the driving factors?

In Minnesota I've seen 3130 the errors improve in a short period of time. Their 2015 season was their breakout year winning 2 regionals, semi-finalist at champs, and winning the MN state championship. 2016 was also great for them as they won another regional and were semi-finalists at champs again. 3130 slowly jumped from just another team in MN to a powerhouse in FRC IMO.

Team 2122 the tators I feel like have also improved. They've been gunning at hitting Einstein for a long time and I feel like they finally took that step into the elite team they are. Ever since I saw them in 2014 in Galileo, I know they've been a good team. They definitely had a stellar stacking machine 2015 and of course in 2016 they jumped to that next level with their stellar performance in Carson.

2481 the robo-teers have also been improving. Ever since I saw their reveal video in 2014 I knew they were one of the upcoming teams that make their stance in the big stage. From making their first appearance on Einstein in 2014 to winning it all in 2016, these guys have been improving year after year.

There are so many teams to choose from, but these are the ones that appear first on my mind.

[jajabinx124]

*facepalm*

How in the world could I forget 5172!!! Even thought they started with a stellar year their rookie year and have been maintaining that performance they took the next step this year with winning their first regional and making their team name loud within FRC. I was surprised they didn't get on Einstein- even in Newton the most stacked division. They have improved a ton since 2014 and if they keep improving at this pace, I won't be surprised if they'll put their name up with the big named teams year after year. Too bad 2 champs is next year.. I wish I could be saying 5172 could eventually win it all in the future.. :/ Oh well they'll have to settle with winning North Champs sometime..

[Jay O'Donnell]

Admittedly this is completely biased as it is my old team, but I think 1058 fits this pretty well despite not being that well known. Plus I love talking about the team's history so this should be fun.

From 2003-2009, 1058 was known by others as the team who would do creative things and do well, but wasn't good enough to win events or anything. Some cool features include a giant ball catching robot in 2004, an insanely massive crane for 2005 (as well as some neat software), lots of strange uses for PVC, and for a little while a strong usage of mecanum wheels. Won a couple of awards such as rookie all star and a quality award, but never made it past the semifinals.

2010 was a breakout year for the Pirates, with a cool kicking mecanism, climber, field oriented mecanum drive, and could strafe on the bump (https://youtu.be/qkRz-zcqY6I 1:20 in the video). The team won their first regional ever at GSR and was even an alliance captain at IRI.

The next few years however were mediocre in terms of the robot success. Once again we had some really cool designs such as mecanums with locking rollers, strange linkage arms and frisbee floor intakes that put banebots out of business, but we couldn't get back to that 2010 level.

2010-2013 was the changing point for 1058 however. The team started becoming less of a robotics club and more of a FIRST program. A student leadership system was established, funding through the town and sponsors became a priority, we started going to as many offseason events as we possibly could, and we began hosting and traveling to dozens of demos all across New England. The team won our first Chairmans Award at GSR 2012, and our lead mentor Mike Pettengill won the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award at Pine Tree 2013.

The final piece of the puzzle was to make 1058's unique robots become competitive once again. In 2014 we began a new system in how we went about design to fabrication, decided to CAD everything in detail before machining, and began making everything in house after learning how to use our DRO mills. We made our first custom frame, finished the robot earlier than we ever had, and kept to our usual unique design choices (seriously go check out our 2014 robot). This process led to an excellence in engineering award in 2014, and the same process led to more design awards in 2015 and 2016.

Present day, the team has kept to the new design method of high CAD utilization, designing from the ground up, and having students machine parts in house closer to spec than some cots parts (one of our students machined a linear bearing within 2 yen thousandths of an inch on a manual mill in 2015). The team had their best year ever in 2016, winning three district events and competing at 8 events already this season (they usually hit 7-10 a year). In the last 5 years 1058 has won 3 chairmans awards and 3 district events, as well as many different robot and non robot awards.

That was way longer than I thought it would be. I hope it doesn't look like I'm going too hard. I learned a lot after graduating from 1058 that I got really lucky with the team I was able to be on. I hear many complaints from FRC alumni about their experience as a student. I have no complaints. The student base always got along, the mentors are amazing and truly "get" what FIRST is all about. They push their students to learn incredible things and become anything they want to be. Seriously though, go check out some 1058 robots on Blue Alliance, they're all very unique machines from the normal design each year, but you can see the improvements slowly building on themselves.

Hopefully someone enjoys reading this because it took a really long time to write.

[Jay O'Donnell]

As a MUCH shorter post, go check out 319 from 2013 to the present. The growth is super obvious.

[Koko Ed]

FRC 1218 went from finishing dead last at the 2004 Chesapeake regional (didn't win a single match) to making it to Einstein and ending up world runner up that year.

[JABot67]

Before 2009, NC GEARS 1918 had never made eliminations. In 2008, they seeded 40th at their only regional. In 2009 they had an ABSOLUTELY AMAZING breakout year in which they won a district event, made finalist at another district event, ranked #2 overall and made finals at MSC, and ranked #2 and made finals again on Newton. In 2010 they seeded first at MSC and were champions. They're still a powerhouse today.

Ridiculous improvement in just one year.

[frcguy]

In CA (or pretty much anywhere): 1678, hands down. They went from an OK team (rank 30 in SAC 2009, 11 at SAC 2010) to winning regionals and Championship quarterfinalists in 2011 and 2012 (winner SAC and Curie QF both years), to winning SAC, Curie, and appearing on Einstein (all as an alliance captain) for their first year in 2013. This started an Einstein appearance streak that stands to this day, 3 seasons later. In 2014, they won IE and SAC, were finalists at SVR, and were alliance captains on Newton, going all the way to Einstein finals. We know what happened last year: wins at CVR, SAC, and SVR, captain of the winning alliance on Newton, and winning the FIRST championship. This year was no different in terms of incredible performance, with a record of 59-4-2. That encompassed regional wins at CVR, SAC, SVR, winning Hopper, and Einstein semifinalists. They are truly on top of the FRC world. The most amazing part is they are incredibly open and want to help as many teams as they can achieve the levels of success they can. I encourage anyone reading this to ask them about how they do what they do, I guarantee they would love to tell you.

[Sperkowsky]

Although this is probably not what this thread is about I am going to talk about my own team.

Team 2869 began in 2009 under the name One Small Step. Our 2009 year was not terrible for a rookie placing towards the bottom and winning Rookie Inspiration out of 3 rookies that year. 2010 was not a good season in all reality but we seeded well and became the 7th alliance captain. But it was clear we were not too good scoring 1 and 2 in our 2 respective quarterfinal matches. 2011 was not good.. seeding 43/50. 2012 was actually a pretty good year for us where we captained the 5th alliance and were not completely blown out in our quarterfinal matches. All our robot could do was score in autonomous (Intake did not work) but it was a good year for us. However, everything went down from there.

In 2013 we built a net on wheels which seeded us 36/50.
In 2014 (my rookie year) we built this whole elaborate shooter that was too big and did not work. So we chopped it off on practice day. From there we had a barely driving robot with mecanum wheels. Although we seeded 43/66 I consider this rock bottom for our team. We then decided we were going to do an offseason competition for the first time. We tried to build just an intake and failed. We ended up with the same exact robot. I don't have a picture on my laptop but when I get home on Tuesday ill add one.

2015 was the first year I really put a lot of effort into robotics. We had a lot of internal issues fighting over designs and we ended up fighting to the finish to build a robot. The robot was built to spec by stop build day but did not function.. at all. The elevator system did not work at all and we actually only saw it lift for one match. Despite me trying the best as a driver I could ramming into bins to try to move them and actually scoring a few points from pushing totes we seeded last. Our team however, was looking better. We had a logo for the first time, and a website.

The 2015-2016 season is where we really switched into high gear. At the end of the 2015 school year I was elected Captain. What I saw was a team that was failing, the school saw that we spent 3 years without making elims and also saw that we never took home an award since our rookie year. It was clear we either got better or disbanded. Over that summer we got our first sponsors and perfected one of the vetoed designs from the 2015 season. Going in to the 2015/2016 school year we started off building a brand new 2015 robot. This robot was simple very simple but, it worked. For the first time since 2012 we had a working robot. That working robot took us to the finals at a local offseason. We came home with a trophy for the first time in 7 years of being a team. Going into the 2016 season we were in high gear. We finished the robot week 3 and spent 3 weeks making it better. As soon as we went to our week 0 in CT we were getting comments about how good our robot was performing and such. This was crazy for us as we were usually the laughing stock of an event and to hear comments like these from good New England teams was very inspiring. We did pretty well at our one and only regional seeding bad but getting chosen as a first pick to the 8th seeded alliance. It was the first time ever we were picked for an alliance. Due to our low seed I was surprised we were picked. When I made that comment to our alliance captain she laughed at that statement and commented that she was surprised we were not picked yet. We had a short run in the quarterfinals winning the first match and losing the next 2 by close margins. Because of a ref missing a crossing we were kicked out but we put up the 2nd highest score for the regional and overall it was a performance we were proud of. I also ended up taking home the deans list finalist award and our mentor took home the woodie flowers finalist award. That meant our first blue banner and first time getting official awards other then a rookie award. Our team is no longer the worst team at an event and is now a decently known middle of the road team.

Next year we hope to win our first regional and hopefully take home a chairmans award or ei award. Currently we are fixing our bottlenecks (CAD and electrical) and designing an offseason robot which will hopefully win our first event.

Overall this year was huge for our team and hopefully its only the start. We went from seeding last never moving to being a first pick at a regional, being finalists at an offseason, and winning 2 awards.

I will end this post saying although I was the captain of the team this year without an incredible team to lead we would have failed once again.

[Aidan Cox]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

As a MUCH shorter post, go check out 319 from 2013 to the present. The growth is super obvious.

+1


Also going to throw 166 and 238 into the mix.
-166's robots over the past few years have been getting better and better, with this year's being one of my favorite bots of 2016. Looking forward to seeing what they produce in the upcoming years

-238 had a breakout year. As a team with some origins all the way back to '92, this was the first year they ever medaled- and boy did they medal. Might not be an improvement over the course of a couple or few years, but an improvement nonetheless and I'm excited to see how they do in the future as well.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

I agree with 1918. Came out of nowhere in 2009, and haven't stopped since.
I'd also like to mention 314 for the Biggest Improvement Delta discussion:

2011: 8-15-1 at two districts; no awards, no playoffs, no Champs
two years of steady improvement later
2014: 2 District Wins, 1 District Finals, MSC Winner

[hutchMN]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

*facepalm*

How in the world could I forget 5172!!! Even thought they started with a stellar year their rookie year and have been maintaining that performance they took the next step this year with winning their first regional and making their team name loud within FRC. I was surprised they didn't get on Einstein- even in Newton the most stacked division. They have improved a ton since 2014 and if they keep improving at this pace, I won't be surprised if they'll put their name up with the big named teams year after year. Too bad 2 champs is next year.. I wish I could be saying 5172 could eventually win it all in the future.. :/ Oh well they'll have to settle with winning North Champs sometime..

5172 has been good since day one. I can't believe they don't have more than 1 regional win.

[hutchMN]

I hate talking about my former team, but 2502 went from being a bottom half MN team to being a top 5 MN team ever since our 2013 season. We took another huge leap during the 2015 season when my friends and I kinda had a coup of the leadership about halfway through the competition season. That really changed the focus on 2502 to being the best possible team we can be.

[bkahl]

195 barely fielded a robot in 2010.

The team came back in 2011 under new leadership and in a different structure to win 2 regionals and be competitive at Worlds.

195 has won at least one event in every season since.