2006 IRI - Thanks & Congratulations

[Josh Hambright]

Man I only got to attend one day of this years IRI, I've been to every IRI since its inception, and I must say that this one had a level of competition that surpassed anything we could have ever dreamed of when years ago a bunch of Indiana teams got together in a gym in Kokomo to have a little off season scrimage.

Thanks to all my fellow volunteers, especialy the scoring/reset kids who did such a great job working with Jerry Budd keeping everything running smoothly and on time. Thanks to the guys behind the scoring table Brandon Martus, David Kelly, Molly Menges, Mark Koors, The Gilbert twins, and everyone else helping out over there, you guys faced some challenges and blew right past them.

Thanks to the greatest announcing/MC crew we've seen to date, Paul, John, Colin, and Dan you guys were awesome. I especialy enjoyed the speed rounds.

Congrats to 71 1625 and 910 on the win, from what I heard from everyone i talked to after the wedding i had to attend yesterday *grumble grumble stupid weddings during robotics events* it was a hard fought win.
Congrats to 233, 217, and my favorite team 1272, From what I hear you guys did amazing and never gave an inch without a fight! Congrats to my team 1272, You guys continualy amaze me by what you can accomplish even when everything seems to be going wrong and new challenges are constantly popping up, you guys are an inspiration to me.

Ohh and less i forget Mr Baker, thanks for letting me reff again and work with such a top notch ref crew. Amy, Andrew, Kevin, Jeff, Lisa, Jeremy, and Stu (Not to mention Mr Kyle love and the other outstanding young gentleman who helped us out for the mentor rounds) it was a pleasure working with you guys, best running ref crew i have worked with yet.

Chris, Andy, and Libby, you guys outdid yourselves again. Thanks for letting me be a part of the magic that is my favorite offseason event, Already looking forward to next year. Thank you Thank you Thank you guys for all the hardwork you do.



(Wow for 1 day i sure did have alot of people to thank!)

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Thanks to everyone for making my first IRI a memerable one. I had great fun as the pit announcer on Friday. One person, that I konw of, recognized me but I met a bunch of new people. Dave, Tytus, Arefin, Andy, and there's more that I may not have known who they were.
Thanks to team 40 for bringing their VEX field and robots. I got a lot of interesting ideas from them.
And especially thanks to team 107 for letting me and a couple fellow teammates be honorary members. That was fun.
Thank God I got to see the semi-finals. They were, undoubtedly, the best matches I have seen any year.
Did every single team end up with a tie or two?
And congrats to the winners and finalists. Excellent alliances.

Next year, people need to start wearing their safety glasses. I saw many people walking around without their safety glasses. In fact, I saw more adults and mentors without safety glasses than students. There were also a few Poof throwing incidents, which included a student running back and forth while an ADULT mentor threw the ball to him. Multiple times nearly running into a tool chest.

There is one thing that I have a grumble about while I was in Indianapolis this weekend. It was the weather. There's nothing more ruining of your IRI fun than sleeping in a tent full of rain water. I didn't get to the competition on Saturday until 1.

[Nuttyman54]

Is there anywhere i can find archived video of the eliminations? the webcast wasn't working for me.

[Danielle H]

This was my first IRI, and it was, dare I say, amazing.
Sadly, I got to see everything through the first round of finals, but then I left early because I was sick.
There's no explaining 44 balls in the center goal.
Thanks to 45 for letting us use a battery on Thursday night (for checking the field) when we left all of ours in Libby Ritchie's car.
Thanks to everyone who tried to figure out the issue with our drive station on Thursday night.
Thanks to 233 and 47 for being amazing alliance partners for my first and only time driving the robot.
Thanks to Jerry and Venny for yelling, at the same time , mind you, completely opposite things for me to do while I was driving. But thanks Jerry for telling me to ignore Venny beforehand. =)
Finally, thanks to Ryan for suggesting I do that Andy Baker poem for the Talent Show. I got to talk to some interesting people, and his wife wants me to e-mail her a copy.

Thanks again,
Danielle || 393

[Lil' Lavery]

My 3rd personal IRI, and 116's second, I can safely say this was the best of them all.

To 25, 1114, and 33:
You guys were a blast to hang around during the QFs and SFs. You pushed 71, 1625, 910 further than any other alliance, and played what I consider the greatest elimination series I have ever seen. Probably the most impressive feat was the fact that the croud was actually cheering for Beatty!

To 71, 1625, and 910:
Wow......just wow. Your trip to the championship was amazing. We were almost giddy watching those matches with how close, high scoring, fast, and genuinely entertaining they were. You guys really earned all of your wins.

To 1712:
Thanks for the cardboard!

To 296:
Thanks for letting us cut off the end of your pool noodle, it saved us!

To 393:
Thanks for having so many entries in the talent show, it would have been alot less fun without you.

To 1114:
Thanks for making that fire alarm sound pleasing

To 71:
Thanks for giving us a chance to get outside on Friday

To all the folks that helped to put together IRI:
Thank you for an amazing event. I can't wait to come back next year!

To anyone else I forgot:
thanks!

[taggartbg]

IRI was awesome! i just got back from a 12 hour bus ride back to PA

[Chuck Glick]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

My 3rd personal IRI, and 116's second, I can safely say this was the best of them all.

To 25, 1114, and 33:
You guys were a blast to hang around during the QFs and SFs. You pushed 71, 1625, 910 further than any other alliance, and played what I consider the greatest elimination series I have ever seen. Probably the most impressive feat was the fact that the croud was actually cheering for Beatty!

To 71, 1625, and 910:
Wow......just wow. Your trip to the championship was amazing. We were almost giddy watching those matches with how close, high scoring, fast, and genuinely entertaining they were. You guys really earned all of your wins.

To 1712:
Thanks for the cardboard!

To 296:
Thanks for letting us cut off the end of your pool noodle, it saved us!

To 393:
Thanks for having so many entries in the talent show, it would have been alot less fun without you.

To 1114:
Thanks for making that fire alarm sound pleasing

To 71:
Thanks for giving us a chance to get outside on Friday

To all the folks that helped to put together IRI:
Thank you for an amazing event. I can't wait to come back next year!

To anyone else I forgot:
thanks!

hope it came in quite handy.

[David55]

I am very happy I had the chance to come to IRI this year. It was definitely the best FIRST event I have been to. The teams were great, the event was well organized, everyone was nice and it was just overall fun.

A big thanks to Chris Fultz and Libby Ritchie for making it possible for me to come to IRI.
Also thanks to the members of team 393..It was fun hanging out with you guys and having dinner after the competition.

Hopefully everything will work out and I'll be in the US next summer and will be able to come to IRI again next year.

David

[Dan Zollman]

Thanks to all the sponsoring teams, including team 40 for the vex, Ryan for running the talent show. I actually don't know who ended up offering and/or giving us the breaker, but thanks for that too.

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by worldbringer

Thanks to all the sponsoring teams, including team 40 for the vex, Ryan for running the talent show. I actually don't know who ended up offering and/or giving us the breaker, but thanks for that too.

Thanks to Stu Bloom's crew, the Robo Devils (1018), for the main breaker after 1712's went bad and also another huge thanks to 1646 for the Anderson quick-disconnect. You kept us running and in the game.

Personally, I want to thank Chris, Andy, and Libby for organizing such an incredible event and to the volunteers for flawless execution. Aside from the competition, dodgeball was cool and judging the talent show was a blast. It's also rare to get the chance to spend time with so many of your FIRST heroes in one place:
-Andy, Mark, Chris, Scott, Stu, Paul, Karthik, JVN, Dave, Tony, Dan G., Raul, Brandon, Mike, Amanda, Dan L. ... and I'm sure there are many more I'll remember later.

[Jack Jones]

The thanks we owe IndianaFirst for IRI almost goes without saying. But I'll say it anyway. Thank you all so very much!

Words alone can not express our gratitude to both sets of Martians for all they've done for 1213 this year. They fronted us $4k so that we could buy some time to get in the show. We practiced together. They gave us their camera.h and helped us focus our camera at IRI. It did not exorcise the gremlins, but it gave us the confidence in that we'd done about all that we could do for her in the pits, so we drove her like we had to.

The Killer Bees loaned us a backup-backup battery when ours failed to charge. I finally replaced the PWMs we borrowed from them at GLR. Chief Delphi loaned us batteries to save us from going back and forth to the far side of the pits. They loaned us their HP, after ours had to leave before the eliminations. Beth had 1504 bring along their extra camera because I had a premonition (not really, ours was flaky but it worked) that ours would fail. Turns out we didn't use it; we were winning with our eye half closed :-) but 1504 was there for us.

It's often said at TARDEC that no good deed shall go unpunished. So it is that now you all have gone and done it; you'll have this little old guy hanging round way more than you want.

PS: Before you get the chance to say it - I realize that the above is already the case.

[carla_rose]

[quote=Lil' Lavery]To 25, 1114, and 33:
You guys were a blast to hang around during the QFs and SFs. You pushed 71, 1625, 910 further than any other alliance, and played what I consider the greatest elimination series I have ever seen. Probably the most impressive feat was the fact that the croud was actually cheering for Beatty!
QUOTE]

thanks so much! it was a great series and were glad that so many people enjoyed it!!!


IRI was so awesome! it was my first time attending it and it was probably my fav. comp. besides nationals. i just wish it lased longer..... All the people were so nuce and friendly. plus all the best robots were there. i got to see old friends and make a lot of new one. I had so much fun and will definetly be coming back!!

[FoleyEngineer]

Our second trip to IRI and what a blast! Thanks to Jim Z of team 33 for letting us know about it last year and for being so gracious in your help with anything we asked for.

Thanks to our partners in the playoffs - 71 and 1625... what teammates! You guys just poured them in! Great strategizing and amazing offense! We let everyone on our team get a chance at driving or being the human player during the weekend matches so we figured our so-so record would make our chance of getting picked pretty slim. Thanks for looking beyond the stats! Nobody thought our alliance stood a chance against the #1 and #2 seeds plus the Killer Bees. It took three incredible matches but we did it! We're still shaking our heads at the one match when our defensive autonomous mode managed to take them on when all three went to shoot, and we somehow managed to push 1114 into 25 and drive them off to the side out of range, then back up and turn around and drive 33 into the opposite side wall for the duration of the auton period. It was like it had eyes. Yeah, it ran an arc pattern and reversed and went forward multiple times to cover as much area as possible but let's face it... catching all three robots? What luck! Sheesh!

Hats off to our finalist opposition too! The world champs, previous IRI champs and (Boilermaker?) regional winners - wow! Everyone took us to three matches and we had to play our last 4 matches with only 1 of 2 CIM drive motors on one side working (speed controller died) so we were sweating bullets if we could still defend and also keep you off of our teammates. You were so FAST! Everyone was just so darned good!

We're a very small team and have learned so much from so many helpful teams out there that we can't begin to thank them all. I know my son will grow up to be a better engineer, and a truly gracious professional because of each and every one of you. Why can't all sporting events be like IRI??? Thanks to all!

Foley Freeze - #910 - 2005 Newton 9-0 & Finalists, 2006 Grand Rapids Finalists, 2006 IRI Champs (woo hoo!)

[J Flex 188]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

To 296:
Thanks for letting us cut off the end of your pool noodle, it saved us!

296 came to IRI!? I would have taken them in a pool. Or is that 269? heh.

[Kyle Love]

Originally Posted by J Flex 188

296 came to IRI!? I would have taken them a pool. Or is that 269? heh.

I believe it was 269, I didn't see 296.