The Best Team(s) to Never Win an Official Event

[Kevin Leonard]

A phenomenal team I met in 2016- Team 4481, the Rembrandts. They had some incredible and ambitious machines in 2015 and 2016, but somehow came up short, losing in the finals at Virginia 2015 and being on the 8th seeded alliance at Tech Valley 2016 against 359.

[JohnFogarty]

Originally Posted by Monochron

No real presense on here, but I have to call out my Alma Mater, 1102 M'Aiken Magic. Financial reasons (and a focus on their incredible FTC teams) keeps them down to one Regional per year, but from 2012 - 2015 they never seeded outside of the top 8, topping out at 4th and 3rd recently. As to what is keeping them from winning . . . I'm not sure. They haven't been able to seed 1st and it often appears that their strategy is to do so, maybe they don't often compliment other robots in the game.

My mom still mentors 1102 even though I graduated many moons ago. They've dropped FTC entirely for the coming year and are only doing Vex and FRC. Will they invest more in FRC? Only time will tell because they are doing a lot to recruit new mentors. As far as I know now they still only plan to do 1 regional. They definitely have a lot more success with lower cost competitions. They have a record of winning some event in FTC or Vex every year since I was a Freshman in highschool in 08.

[Anthony Galea]

In my opinion, 1189 is a team who is going to get their first win very soon. 3x Finalist and MSC SF in 2015, 1 SF in 2016, 2x SF in 2014, Finalist and SF in 2013.

[CoachC]

Ask me again after 2017 season is over
Best of luck to all who compete.

Jim (Coach C)
Team 5247
Red Devil Robotics

[Chris is me]

Extremely biased here, due to my involvement with the team for six years, but I'm convinced it's 2791. And I'm not technically on the team right now so this post is OK

Here's a complete list of the close calls 2791 has had in their history:

BAE 2012: Second pick of the 7th alliance with 1519 and 885. Knocked out the 2nd and 3rd alliances on the way to the finals, won Finals 1... and died suddenly during Finals 2. Due to some confusion the alliance was not permitted a backup robot and they lost Finals 3 2v1.

CT 2012: Second pick of the #1 seed with 2168 and 118. 2168 was the best team to not win a regional that year, and 118 was an Einstein caliber robot. After cruising through the quarters, 118 encountered the same bug that disabled them on Einstein. Still, the alliance would have won Semifinal 2, except for the fact that after the buzzer, a robot rolled off the opponent's bridge, and the remaining robot perfectly balanced it. Blown out in Semis 3 and that was that.

---

WPI 2013: 2791 ended up as the #1 seed of this event, picking the highest scoring robot and only floor loader of the event in team 20. In the quarterfinals, an arm gear broke, removing their ability to hang. After a frantic fix, the robot was still functional for semis and finals, scoring the highest points of the event until Finals 2, when 2168 discovered that if you hit 2791 just right, their arm now had enough slop in it with the repair to jostle their shooter into a jammed state. In Finals 3, a full court feeding strategy was attempted to mitigate this, which almost worked. Any of three separate events would have won the event - 2791's shooter working as they were hit into the pyramid by 2168 (changes a foul into a tech); 3182 not hanging in the center front of the pyramid on top of a disk (and us remembering the Q&A that clarified this is a legal hang); 20 slidng off the very edge of the pyramid at the zero second mark. This was the most painful close call I'd been a part of.

---

FLR 2014: Less close than some of those above, but the #4 seed 341 declined the #2 seed to pick us and 4930. In the semi-finals, we ended up losing by a single missed truss shot in match 1. We were more easily beaten in match 2. Not particularly close but a strong performance.

---

2015 never happened

---

TVR 2016: 2791 is the first pick of the 3rd alliance, after some issues with the drivetrain and collector. Set some high scores quickly in the quarters, but were bested in the semis by 3 close matches after a substitution on the other alliance.

FLR 2016: 2791 is much improved, doing a solo capture at least once in quals. 2791 is the first overall pick of the event, by 5254. The second pick is a sleeper who was high performing at their last event but struggled early at FLR. After storming through the quarters, a combination of bad autonomous luck and shutdown defense by future Einstein finalist 1405 kept 2791 from even qualifying for Championship.

---

So depending on how generous you're being, that's at least 3 events where a small change in circumstances would result in 2791 having won an event. And with the exception of 2015 (my bad), they have gotten more competitive every year since 2011, always running into a combination of mistakes, circumstances, and bad luck. I think they're overdue.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

They can not be your team or teams.

This should be a rule for all of these types of threads.

[jajabinx124]

First team that comes to mind for me is 4536 The Minutebots. They've been Finalists at the 10,000 lakes regional 3 years in a row (2014, 2015, 2016) and got the wildcard each time. They recently won their first unofficial event, but they've yet to win their first blue banner. 4536 has been unlucky due to the fact that the 10,000 lakes regional is dominated by the usual powerhouses (525, 2052, 2502), but I still find it impressive they make a name for themselves every year against the powerhouses facing them in the finals.

Other notable MN mentions: 2705, 2846, 2987. I'm probably overlooking a couple from MN.

Team 706 also comes to mind. They've been competing from 2001 - 2016, and they've been Finalists 6 times. It's been a HUGE mixture of unluckyness. The 1 loss that to stick out to me is when they lost against 3018 and 2052 at Lake Superior in 2014. 706 missed 2 or 3 shots and wasted a lot of time during the match in Finals 2 (they had also won Finals 1) and if they had made any one of those shots, they would have won their first blue banner.

[Christopher149]

From the UP of Michigan: probably have to go with 1596. One time regional finalist, a smattering of design awards, and a couple trips to States. As to why they haven't won, some of it is probably the small number of teams and events in the UP, and the show's been stolen by downstate teams and the likes of 2586, 3602, and 4391.

In a different vein, I think 2246 The Army of Sum must be the best at winning the Imagery Award (8 times) without having won an event.

[Jin Hayashi]

The move from the Regional model to the District model, has allowed most of the top teams and many of the very good teams in PNW to win an event. It benefited my team two seasons ago as one of the very good (IMO) teams in PNW.

I would probably put 4450 ORF at the top of the list for PNW. They are a relatively new team and haven't made any finals. However, they have consistently been ranked high enough to be an alliance captains at every PNW District Event they've attended the past three seasons. They made all three PNW District Championships and World Championships three out of the four seasons that they have existed.

In the next group, there are several very good teams that have not won an event. There are too many to mention all of them. I would like to call out 1294 and 1778 which probably are the two teams that have the most finalist appearances with three apiece.