2008 Arizona Regional

[Donut]

This was another great regional and in many ways improved over previous years, the number of rookie teams (and those that were good too) was outstanding and the new pit and field set up is so much better than the old one. Not to mention it's the most teams AZ has ever seen!

Thank you to team 207 for selecting us for your alliance, and congratulations on two well deserved awards! And another thank you to our other partner 2449, who is one impressive rookie team. I remember watching their robot at Duel in the Desert only a few weeks ago and I didn't realize until yesterday that this bot had been built by a rookie team. We made it to the quarterfinals with these two and it was one of the closest playoff rounds I've seen. Quart-Final 2-3 had the best ending ever, I would NEVER have believed I'd be screaming at a trackball that much and that the entire stadium would be doing so with me. I'm going to work on getting that match up ASAP.

Congratulations to 60, 39, and 1165 for a dominating playoff performance and a well earned Championship. 3 champs in a row for 60 now, and 2 for 39, this is becoming quite the streak!

And I have to say that of all our team's robots ever built, this is the one I'm most proud of. It went 4-4 and was ranked 28 out of 52 (and no where near the best performing robot we've made), and only made it to the quarter-finals. It was not the best robot at the competition in any game category, be it scoring, defense, or autonomous. It had no super-cool doohickey mechanisms and didn't provide any strange or spectacular gameplay to watch. It got penalties that sometimes lost matches. It won no awards at the competition, but for the first time since joining the team in 2004, I can truly say I don't care.

Because this is the first robot we've ever committed to and successfully finished early so that we'd actually get to drive and test time before Thursday at Regionals.
Because this is the first year we were inspected before 6 PM and without frantic filing or finishing touches, passing inspection at 11 AM.
Because this is the first time we've ever had 0 break downs, and the only thing repaired was re-stapling bumpers.
Because this is the first year our robot actually looked good, when we've had trouble turning out anything other than an aluminum-colored hulk in the past.

And because this is the first robot we've built that succeeded at everything we wanted it to. It was simple. It was low maintenance. It scored effectively. It had an autonomous that worked. Its look caught attention. And it was finished on schedule. All of our past robots, even those that were top 8 seeds and won technical awards for one feature or another, failed to achieve at least one goal.

To all the rookies at Arizona, any team that may be disappointed their robot isn't ranking highly or taking shiny hardware home, and even the teams with robots that are: figure out what the few (or only one even) simple things are you want to achieve with your robot, be it organizational, aesthetic, or functional, and ensure that you go all out to get those few goal(s) achieved. When you do you won't care if you leave the competition with two trophies and a medal in hand or a bottom seed with an 0-8 record, because you'll know you did everything you wanted to do with that robot. And I can tell you, it's the greatest feeling you can get from this competition.