2005 West Michigan

[Jack Murphy]

Congratulations to team 67 for earning the West Michigan Chairman's Award!

I tell you what....I showed up there this morning after waking up at 4:30 and driving 3 and a half hrs expecting it to be quite an event.

I was right.

Excellent showing all around...elimination rounds were full of almost upsets and upsets. I don't want to call the finals an upset because both alliances were very good, but I was really impressed with 107, 66, and 93 going out there and beating an experienced alliance of 27, 33, and the winner of 2 regionals this year, 245.


Awesome event, congrats to all award winners

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Congradulations team 107, 66, and 93. We had the great chance to work with 107 last weekend at Midwest. In past years we have competed against 93 and they always have a constantly exemplary machine. Always developing new technology. I wish we could have been at any of the regionals you attended.

Congrats to all teams

Budda

[Lisa Perez]

Here's to wishing a big congratulations to not only the winners and the finalists, but also all of the teams out there. You guys provided some great competition.. just about the best I've seen in the three years I've been in FIRST.

Thanks to 322 and to 862 for being excellent alliance partners!

[opnickc]

Originally Posted by Jack Murphy

Congratulations to team 67 for earning the West Michigan Chairman's Award!

Thank you! You have no idea how thrilled we were. Winning the Chairman's Award beats winning a regional any day. This is the first time we've won it, so we were obviously very excited. We're hoping for the best for both our robot and Chairman's submission as we go to Atlanta.

[Will Hanashiro]

heres one huge congrats to 66-93-107.... yall were amazing! 66, you guys never cease to amaze me.

573 & 862, we had a nice run and we were ooooo soooo cloooose. hehe.

[Mini-D67]

Originally Posted by tkwetzel

I noticed that team 67 is way down near the bottom of the standings after Friday. Can someone please explain this, as they seemed to have yet another top-notch robot at previous regionals? Did their robot break or did they have really bad luck in alliance pairing?

We had no problems what-so-ever with the bot, in fact, we did everything we set out to do flawlessly. Its just that we can't do everything on the field on our own... we have to rely on our partners to do at least sort of what we talk about in strategy meetings. I guess thing just didn't turn out for us very well in most of the 'random' alliance pickings.

But hey, our 'gold requiremnt' for this regional was met by our Chairmans ladies, so its all good.

[Matt Reiland]

From what I saw of 67, their robot was running very nicely, the arm system (as usual) was very articulate and worked fast. The problem that I saw was than in every match on Friday, immediately an opponent came down and did nothing but hinder them for the entire match. 302 actually proved extremely effective at this in all of the matches I watched so did 322. So it left 67 with having to perfectly get to the load stations then outmaneuver the guarding robot then try and get to the goal then drop a tetra while getting pushed repeatedly. They actually managed to do it more than I would expect under those conditions with the aid of a good driver and a maneuverable swerve drive. Definitely like the robot, amazing how many people were complaining to the refs about your feelers on the front even after the refs agreed they were OK!?

[Jack Jones]

Originally Posted by Matt Reiland

... Definitely like the robot, amazing how many people were complaining to the refs about your feelers on the front even after the refs agreed they were OK!?

Not all the refs agreed; just the ones that matter did.

I foresee a feeler-flopper war at the NATs. For example, we (1213) missed a grand opportunity (DOH!) in Detroit and West Michigan. Technically, we're a flopper too. So, something like a piece of Spectra string hanging from that golf-ball-on-a-stick would have touched the triangle every time and have saved us a few rewards.

Word up! Make something that flops off the front of your bot to touch the loading zones.

Or not! More wrt/ this HERE

[Not2B]

[quote=Will Hanashiro

573 & 862, we had a nice run and we were ooooo soooo cloooose. hehe.[/QUOTE]

No kidding! Thanks 573 and 322 for a great time. Even though we felt we were doing good, our ranking didn't show it. Glad someone was scouting to find us!!!

Just getting picked was one of the most exciting moments in our teams history!

[Not2B]

Originally Posted by Matt Reiland

From what I saw of 67, their robot was running very nicely, the arm system (as usual) was very articulate and worked fast. The problem that I saw was than in every match on Friday, immediately an opponent came down and did nothing but hinder them for the entire match. 302 actually proved extremely effective at this in all of the matches I watched so did 322. So it left 67 with having to perfectly get to the load stations then outmaneuver the guarding robot then try and get to the goal then drop a tetra while getting pushed repeatedly. They actually managed to do it more than I would expect under those conditions with the aid of a good driver and a maneuverable swerve drive. Definitely like the robot, amazing how many people were complaining to the refs about your feelers on the front even after the refs agreed they were OK!?

I think that BECAUSE 67 had an amazing robot, they had so much trouble. Our after watching a few matches at GLR, we KNEW someone had to go run interference with 67 if we were to have a chance. It's like double teaming Michael Jordan. And this year was one year I am glad we are a relatively unknown team. No one bothered us, no one came to block us (for the most part), and let us score about 5-6 tetras a match. Most good teams can't score 5-6 tetras when they are getting pounded all match.

[TLonghorns0593]

Was it ever a hard elimination round and WM yesterday.Congrats to 27, 33, and 245 for one heck of a round of finals. Thank-you to 107 for picking us, and 66 for competing with us. FINALLY Team 93 has won a regional. Can't wait till Nats see you there.

[Mini-D67]

Originally Posted by Matt Reiland

From what I saw of 67, their robot was running very nicely, the arm system (as usual) was very articulate and worked fast. The problem that I saw was than in every match on Friday, immediately an opponent came down and did nothing but hinder them for the entire match. 302 actually proved extremely effective at this in all of the matches I watched so did 322. So it left 67 with having to perfectly get to the load stations then outmaneuver the guarding robot then try and get to the goal then drop a tetra while getting pushed repeatedly. They actually managed to do it more than I would expect under those conditions with the aid of a good driver and a maneuverable swerve drive. Definitely like the robot, amazing how many people were complaining to the refs about your feelers on the front even after the refs agreed they were OK!?

You hit the nail on the head with that one. It seemed every match we were with inexpirenced teams/drivers and against powerhouse teams... that matches we were with 'good' teams we did sweet. Oh well, you cant expect to have the best of luck at every event....

I guess in the end, the robot took the brunt of the bad luck and left nothing but good luck for our Chairmans chances!

[Jack Jones]

Originally Posted by Mini-D67

You hit the nail on the head with that one. It seemed every match we were with inexpirenced teams/drivers and against powerhouse teams... that matches we were with 'good' teams we did sweet. Oh well, you cant expect to have the best of luck at every event....

I guess in the end, the robot took the brunt of the bad luck and left nothing but good luck for our Chairmans chances!

Whoa Mini-D! A little graciousness please? I can't imagine your loosing partners warming up to your assesment of them; nor can I see the rest of your team supporting the idea that you might not do sweet without 'good' partners.

FYI, we (1213) were never alligned with 66, 67, 245, nor 494; yet we faced all of them - twice each! - twice paired against us. We won many; and, I can point to a tactical or temporal error on our part as the reason for not winning the rest.
Many thanks to all the partners who went up against this year's champions with us.

[Tom McCurdy]

1213 you did have a great bot, we were very impressed with it from the start. It is a shame that quarterfinals didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped. It was still a lot of fun to get there.

thanks to our partners on our team
141 and 1213