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 FIRST- its a pandemic in all our schools. - Akash Rastogi [more] |
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| FIRST- its a pandemic in all our schools. - Akash Rastogi [more] |
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#1
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
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#2
17-07-2016, 23:09
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
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.
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#3
17-07-2016, 23:22
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
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.
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#4
17-07-2016, 23:47
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
Sam posted our team history above, but going back to OP I just wanted to highlight some things that helped us change:
1.) Biggest thing was restructuring the team. As opposed to leads in each area with one mentor to help them all which resulted in loss of communication between the subteams, we decided on one captain and one co-captain + secretary/treasury positions to facilitate school related paper work (they consulted the two mentors). The captain and co-captain communicate with the subteams (via the subteam leads)- about progress. With a small team we found the previously mentioned system doesn't work that well, and personally for our team the latter seems to be a really good fit so far. 2.) Sponsors - By showing the school that we were able to get out there and promote ourselves, the school took a bit of favoring to us. 3.) Doing well in the offseason competition - the school started really believing in us and providing us with lots more money. This also boosted our spirits after several years of not doing so well. 4.) Dedicated members - In my view, the 2015-2016 year has seen dedication like never before. Team members would travel great distances to use practice fields, and meet other teams. A lot of people got really involved, as opposed to previously how 5 or 6 people would just come in the lab and sit there. 5.) Team Communications - We use Slack and Trello for team organization and messaging and it has facilitated so much in regards to getting in contact with people and delivering a "To-Do" list. This also has helped us learn to be more direct in communicating with one another, and helped foster a closer bond than E-mail threads have. 6.) Getting a start on early - Having ran out of time last year - we started off with a bang this year. In the first few days (2-3 days) we were doing late night video calls, and CADing ideas, memorizing the manual, etc. We were able to order items right away as a result. This helped us finish early with lots of time for revisions. This list is in no particular order, except the first one (which I think was the most important thing). Kind of me just rambling. Hope this helps any teams that didn't do as well as they would have liked to this year.
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#5
18-07-2016, 00:37
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
3620 is the one that came to mind as I read this post. In 2013, they didn't even make it to MSC, but in 2014, they exploded. They won their home district, they went to Worlds, and became a powerhouse in community outreach. They're literally amazing and I give props to them. I see the Chairmans Award in their future, and I'm blessed to get to work with them on a regular basis.
If you get the time to speak to any of the students or mentors, do it. They're all such amazing folks, and they have amazing stories. This year I was the drive coach for 2959 and the biggest support I got was from 3620's mentor, Doug. As someone who's been on the floor, he offered me advice, support, and guidance. I didn't approach him, he approached me. They're an AMAZING team.
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#6
18-07-2016, 08:13
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
This won't exactly be news to the OP, but I'd like to throw 1257's hat into the ring for all those who don't know.
2016 Season: - Captained the winning Mt. Olive District alliance. - #1 seed and Finalist at Bridgewater-Raritan District - Won MAR Champs. - Archimedes Semifinalists (5 points from finalists) - Qualified for IRI 2015 Season: - Captain, quarterfinalist at Mt. Olive - 2nd pick, finalist at North Brunswick - Unselected at MAR Champs Of course, this doesn't tell the whole story*: they had an interesting 2014 season, with the #2 seed at MARCMP and a win as a 2nd pick at Clifton. But for reference, they went unselected entirely in the 2013 season. I still argue that 1257's rise has been meteoric. *Well, heck, seeing as I'm not on 1257 I can't tell the entire story.
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#7
18-07-2016, 09:55
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
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#8
18-07-2016, 21:10
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
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#9
19-07-2016, 10:38
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
I don't think there's any question 1678 gets the "most improved" award over the last 6 years or so.
If we're looking at the last 4 years, I would nominate 2338 and 2481. 2338 has gone from picking up our first and only regional win as the 23rd overall pick, to a 3-year Midwest finalist streak (as alliance captain or first pick every time), 3 champs appearances (out of 5 in our history), back-to-back Chairman's awards, an Einstein appearance, and 3 IRI appearances. I'd argue that 2481 didn't start out as low as we did, but they've put out world-class robots for three years now. They were always above average, but now they're WAY above average. 2481 is the most underrated team in the world. If we're looking at just this last season, I'd argue that team 3695, Foximus Prime, blew everyone out of the water. They went from being a team that struggled to field a robot, to having a gorgeous catapult shooter capable of 3-5 midfield shots per match, plus a vision-assisted high goal auto. They somehow didn't get picked at Midwest this year, to the detriment of the many alliances who could have benefited massively from their presence on the field.
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#10
19-07-2016, 22:06
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
As a fun exercise (and cuz I had the data already in R and wanted to practice with dplyr) The list of teams that missed eliminations the prior year and then returned to finals in all of their events the next year (for unrelated reasons, I MAY have removed the win column and only have the level of competition they achieved) consists of 70 teams in the data set from 2007 to right before CMP 2016.
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Last edited by Andrew Schreiber : 19-07-2016 at 22:28.
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#11
19-07-2016, 22:17
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
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#12
19-07-2016, 22:27
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
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I could have dumped the whole table sorted by improvements by year but it's rather long so I cut it to teams that made finals at all of their events the following year. Hence why 1058 isn't on here.
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#13
23-07-2016, 19:09
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
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#14
23-07-2016, 22:45
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
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I'll also mark myself guilty of naming a team of past affiliation, by adding 1747 to the list. Back in the days I was involved and the two years before (2006-2010) we could build a solid drivetrain (as in pushing multiple opposing robots at once solid) but only once fielded a good offensive bot (2009). 2011, the first year of my absence, something changed, and they built a competitive bot and more importantly went from having low team spirit to winning a team spirit awards. Since then things have been up and down but last year they were a dark horse and this year were one of the best teams in Indiana (and that's saying something). It's a different team than the team I left, and different in a very good way. Yeah, it's not like the rapid improvement of teams like 2481 or 1678, but it's the lesser examples that often get overlooked and warrant a mention.
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#15
18-07-2016, 10:51
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Re: What teams have improved the most in the shortest amount of time?
This thread is an interesting one to me, as I like "the numbers" and love seeing or hearing the story behind the numbers... I hope to see it growing!
Really, every good team - whether just "regionally strong" or "internationally elite" - became who they are at some point. For some teams they started out really good or exceptionally good from the beginning (2056 and 1902 come to mind), for other teams they've been so good for so long that we can hardly remember when they weren't exceptional (33, particularly?), and for still other teams their ascent to fame has been gradual and incremental. One team that I'd like to suggest is mentioned here may not make sense to a lot of people (and hasn't had the biggest improvement in the shortest amount of time), is 118. They've been building marvels of engineering since I've been involved in FIRST (2005)... it wasn't until - I think - 2011 that they really started performing on-field at the level that they'd seemingly been building robots at for years. Now, it'd be shocking if they didn't win a handful of blue banners and make it deep in elims at CMP! (although this year they got stuck with some lousy team from New Hampshire at Champs to hold them back from glory... * sigh *) At any rate, I think their most representative pre-2011 season was 2008. Their 2008 robot had a swerve drive, with an excellent catapult to make quick shots (those balls weighed 8-10lbs, btw), they had a pickup that looked like 217's successful design, and to top it all off, their whole upper assembly could rotate (yes, on top of their swerve drive). Phenomenal. Watch their reveal video, released at the beginning of week 4 in the build season! Surely they were in the finals on Einstein losing to the tremendous 1114-217-148 alliance? No, they did alright, but didn't win a blue banner that year and never topped an elim score of 90 points. Their other robots of that era were similar. In 2011 (and onwards) they've still developed phenomenal robots (although now the reveal videos are of the powder-coated robots around bag day), but they've won blue banners left, right, and center and have added several Einstein appearances. Perhaps someone from 118 would like to weigh in to either dismiss this "trend" or to explain it with some back story? 148 actually falls into a bit of a similar category, in that they really weren't over-powering until 2008 (and perhaps some would argue 2009), and have since been at the absolute top-notch, world-class level. 195 is really a great example. They had real success earlier in team history (an Einstein appearance in 2006, for instance), but 2008-2010 were real down years... 0 awards after 2007 UTC regional until the 2011 WPI regional!! 2011 through 2013 they built momentum back up with very strong robots. From 2014 to now, there definitely has not been a stronger team in New England. This year I think 195 really entered the conversation of that truly elite tier (top 5-10 in world). My own team, 1519, I think is also a good example. We had some success in our early years (mostly just 2006 and 2008), but in 2010 we really clicked and have been strong at the regional level since then (2 banners 2005-2009, 14 banners 2010-2016). Unfortunately it seems our luck always runs out at the Championship level... we've only made it past the quarterfinals in 2012 and 2013 (and 2013 was as the third pick of 33 and 469... it would've been hard to mess that up!). Even then, our shot accuracy was degrading on Einstein, and we didn't design the shooter to be adequately serviceable to replace the shooter wheel and our design really didn't fit any role other than FCS particularly well. Some other, more recent rises in New England include: 133, 166, 319, and 4564. 133 has been a quality team with success off the field in 2007-2014, but they had very little on-field success in that period. 2014 was improved, 2015 brought a District Win and District Finalist, and now 2016 brought a tremendous amount of success. They had a high OPR at their first district, won their second, made it all the way to the finals at NE CMP as the #1 pick, but lost to an offensive juggernaut in 195-125-2168 in the finals. At the CMP they fought off several issues to make it all the way to their divisional finals, where they almost prevented the eventual world champions from even making it to Einstein! 166 had a very sharp improvement this year - which I expect them to build on. They've also been a quality team off the field for many years and have hosted Mayhem in Merrimack since 2005 or 2006. In 2015, I thought their robot performance had improved and they qualified for DCMP, but in 2016 they really took off, becoming one of the best shooters in all of New England and going as the #1 pick on Curie with the division's highest OPR. 319 had also been very quiet for a lot the team's history. Some years were better than others, but they'd never won a banner until this year. In 2015 they showed very big improvement on-field and had a very cool 3-tote (plus 2 can? 1 can?) auto. It took them until the off-season to really get it clicking, but they set the stage for this year, when the fielded a very capable, versatile robot that won two district events. 4564 didn't have the long period to set the stage that these other teams did... Instead, in their first two years there were all the signs of a future district-winning team. They won Rookie All-Star in 2013, then in 2014 fielded a stronger robot, pieced together some reasonable alliances (but didn't make it to the finals) and earned a spot at the DCMP. In 2015 they won a district event and finished as a finalist at the other. They made a good showing at DCMP but suffered an early QF exit. In 2016 they didn't end up with a blue banner, but they did field a very strong high goal shooter and innovative climber with which they seeded first at the NE DCMP with 45 RP! They made it all the way to the finals, but lost in three matches (with 133 and 238) to the alliance of 195-125-2168. I'm interested to hear of more teams and to hear stories from some of these teams! Last edited by Nathan Streeter : 18-07-2016 at 10:56.
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(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).
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