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

[Twepeler]

I know it's biased to put my own team but we have made very great strides in a short time. in the span of 2005-2008 we had never gone past qualifying. then in 2009 we made it to eliminations but didn't get passed quarterfinals. After that we went silent yet again all the way through 2014. In 2015 during the Indianapolis Event we became 8th seed alliance captain, made it to semifinals got red carded and didn't advance to finals despite having the points. At the Kokomo event of 2015 we were 6th alliance captain. In 2016 at the Walker Warren event we were 2nd pick of the 7th alliance, and lost in quarters. At the Perry Meridian Event we were 3rd Alliance captain and lost in semifinals to the winning alliance. At the Indiana State Championship we were 2nd pick for the 2nd seed alliance and won state. In just two years we made so much progress

[smitikshah]

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.

[beurwonderwall]

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.

[GKrotkov]

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.

[ASD20]

Originally Posted by 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).

I think 2056 deserves an award for least improved team of all time, simply because they can't possibly do better.

Originally Posted by 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.

I agree. 1058 has had a great few years and this year was just incredible.

Originally Posted by smitikshah

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.

I'm extremely biased, but I think my former team's (4761's), business team has had one of the largest transformations in a short time. 2013 and 2014 we had no real business team and a relatively small budget. From 2014 to 2015, we tripled our budget and won the entrepreneurship award twice. From 2015 to 2016 we nearly doubled our budget again (though a lot of it was from going to CMPs) and we won a District Chairman's award and DCMP Chairman's award and our business team was able to do all of this with only 3-4 people.

[Nathan Streeter]

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!

[robotlover2016]

4818 may not have nearly as much improvement as the teams already mentioned, but this season they went from ranking 58th at the Lake Superior Regional to ranking 5th at the Iowa Regional and being semifinalist.

2175 had a similar story as they were ranked 40th at the Iowa Regional, but then were the #1 seed at the North Star Regional and went on to win the competition.

Both these teams showed an impressive amount of improvement in a single season.

[Nathan Streeter]

Originally Posted by 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.

1678 has to be the correct answer to this thread's question... "who has improved the most in the shortest amount of time?".

Until 2011 they had never made it out of the quarter-finals... at any event. In 2013 they won their division as the #1 seed with a 7-disc auto and 148 as their first pick. They lost on Einstein, but they've returned every year since, including their 2015 win.

[Cash4587]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

1678 has to be the correct answer to this thread's question... "who has improved the most in the shortest amount of time?".

Until 2011 they had never made it out of the quarter-finals... at any event. In 2013 they won their division as the #1 seed with a 7-disc auto and 148 as their first pick. They lost on Einstein, but they've returned every year since, including their 2015 win.

1678 did not have a 7 disc auto at champs in 2013. They did however have a solid 5 disc auto.

[Kyle Reese]

A team I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet is 5254, HYPE.

In their rookie year, they did fairly ok, seeding 14th out of 49 at their only event, got picked as the third robot on the 5th alliance, and lost in the quarterfinals. I can't talk as well about their 2014 year as others, but it wasn't a year in which they were a standout sensation.

At the Tech Valley Regional in 2015, they seeded 15th out of 36, then were picked by us as the 5th seeded captain. We pointed out to them that their robot could benefit from a ramp when stacking. Their output went from maybe half a stack in quals to 2-ish stacks in playoffs. They kept it up in quals at the Finger Lakes Regional and seeded 1st, unfortunately falling in finals. Through a wildcard, they got to champs where they were the first pick on the 6th alliance in the Carson Division. They then went on to get invited to IRI, and got selected to be on an alliance with the best of the best, as they started putting up 3 stacks per match, either hp or landfill. They won both Rah Cha Cha Ruckus and the Tech Valley Robot Rumble offseason events as they continued to improve throughout their entire season. That was really the season when they went from mediocre to great.

And they continued this year, releasing a reveal video week three, seeding second and first at their two regional events, and placing 6th in FRC Top 25 week 3 and 22nd in FRC Top 25 week 4. Along with their season performance, they also got into IRI for the second year in a row and were able to get to the semifinals.

Their constant improvement has really boosted them up in the FRC rankings, and they are definitely fit to play with the big dogs. It's been great to work with them for the past two years, and I can't wait to see what they can do in the future.

[BotDesigner]

Here in Colorado, 1619 has really shifted their program into high-gear. After achieving their first regional victory in at Utah in 2015 they have won the last two Colorado Regionals as the overall 1# seed, pulled off their first RCA at North Arizona Regional, have made it into elims at past 2 IRIs, appeared in the division semis at the 2015 and 2016 champs (their first 2 times at champs), and picked up a Quality Award and a Excellence in Engineering Award at champs in 2016 and 2015 respectively. I really can't wait to see what they can come up with these next few years as they emerge as a internationally competitive team.

[jgerstein]

Originally Posted by GKrotkov

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.

...

*Well, heck, seeing as I'm not on 1257 I can't tell the entire story.

Thank you!

It's been an interesting journey for us. 1257 got off to a good start in 2004 (Rookie Inspiration and Chesapeake Quarterfinalist) and 2005 (Engineering Inspiration and NYC Semifinalist) before a difficult 2006 season that ended with the team being disbanded.

1257 returned in 2009, still in the same district but with no ties to the original team other than location. 2009 and 2010 were unremarkable enough that, without having been there, there isn't much to say. Those two years can best be described as "meh".

In 2011, I started mentoring, and didn't know enough to realize how much I didn't know. I got a crash course in FRC when we got to the NYC regional without a working robot. After I persuaded our lead mentor to accept help, half of 1626 showed up at our pit to help us. We would likely have never made it onto the field that year without their help.

2012 was unremarkable again. We weren't very good, but we weren't shockingly bad either. We had a robot, and it (usually) worked approximately how it was supposed to.

2013 was rock bottom for us. We were ranked near the bottom of MAR, and our low ranking was very much deserved. We focused only on competitive success and had none. We didn't work as a team, and griped about "mentor-built robots" and other perceived unfair advantages.

Our recovery from 2013 started with a few questions.
1. What advantages do other teams have over us?
2. Why do they have those advantages?
3. How do we get those advantages for ourselves?
In discussing the answers to these questions, we created a 4.9 year plan (because the 5 year plan led to too many comments about Stalin and the U.S.S.R.). A major part of that plan was the selection of a role model - another local team that my students wanted our team to resemble.

In 2014, we changed our focus. We still wanted competitive success (who doesn't?), but we stopped trying to jump straight to Einstein. Our goal this year was to play in every match we were scheduled for and to be picked for an alliance. We strove to be more deserving of the awards we envied other teams for winning instead of complaining that we never got them. When 1626 and 869 picked us in Clifton, it was a huge boost to our team. When we got to DCMP that year, we were so unprepared that scouting never even occurred to us until the end of the first day (at which point 1626's mentor stepped up yet again with advice).

2015 was about changing our team culture to a more positive one, continuing to build up our program overall, and learning to scout. We started documenting our work, we made an effort to build up an actual team, and we continued to recruit students from schools in our district beyond the two tech-focused magnet schools.

2016 has helped confirm that we're on a path that's working for us. We have a long way to go still, but the team now is unrecognizable as the team that our most recent graduates knew in their freshman year. We've continued to work towards achievable goals, although we try to make what's achievable a little higher each year. We've reconnected with our roots by getting in touch with alumni from the original team, and even have the father of one of the founding students as a mentor. In the past two years, we've made an effort to connect with other teams and we've worked to help other struggling teams to pay forward the help we've received over the years.

[RoboChair]

Originally Posted by Cash4587

1678 did not have a 7 disc auto at champs in 2013. They did however have a solid 5 disc auto.

We had 4 different 5 disk autos that we spend insane amounts of time getting just right, and if I recall correctly we did have a 7 disk but is wasn't worth using.

Originally Posted by 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, 1st pick of the 1st seeded 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.

Fixed error, Alliance captain was 118.

And to think our 2013 and 2014 robots were machined and built in a 20 ft shipping container and a portable math classroom. I really miss being able to say that. I do not however miss the Quarterfinal Curse.

[BaileyJoseph166]

Originally Posted by Aidan Cox

+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

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

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.

As one of the captains of 166 this past year, I really appreciate the comments about our growth these past few years. 166 has for sure been on a steady incline for probably around 4 years or so, slowly tweaking our design process, mechanical and software training, and how we express ourselves to the public and other teams through our Chairman's submissions.

This past year is certainly the culmination of all those tweaks, and I am extremely proud of the team that came together this year, and I know that the robot and the team seen at competitions next year and the years following will be amazing.

I did not want to mention 166 in this thread due to a degree of modesty, but we definitely have improved our overall team quality in far too many ways for one CD post. Anyone feel free to send me a message on what I and the team did in the past year or so, especially if you are in New Hampshire or even NE, I am always up to talk to teams about what we do on 166!

[Chirag]

Originally Posted by ASD20

I'm extremely biased, but I think my former team's (4761's), business team has had one of the largest transformations in a short time. 2013 and 2014 we had no real business team and a relatively small budget. From 2014 to 2015, we tripled our budget and won the entrepreneurship award twice. From 2015 to 2016 we nearly doubled our budget again (though a lot of it was from going to CMPs) and we won a District Chairman's award and DCMP Chairman's award and our business team was able to do all of this with only 3-4 people.

(Also biased) but 4761's robot quality also improved a lot in a year. I left for college for a few months and came back to a robot that looked wayyy better than anything our team had ever built before.