2008 NASA/VCU Regional

[DRH2o]

Team Talon -- 1598 -- would like to congratulate all the teams for a great weekend at VCU this past weekend.

Thank you to great alliance partners 1137 and 1262 !!!

Thanks for all the hard fought matches in the quarters with 384, 612, and 1885. You were an awsome alliance.

Special congratulations to 1793 -- after a tough year last year, it was great to see you do so well this year ( one of their mentors is a former student of mine -- way to go Corey ) -- good pickin' !!

Thanks to all the teams for noticing us and giving all the positive comments even though we did not place well in Qualifying we thought we had a fairly good robot with great drivers. ( The driver is in the 10th grade )

Those dang penalties -- we made it by 384, 612, and 1885 ( quarters ) because of penalties -- 1793, 1731, and 2108 made it past us ( simi-finals ) because of penalties -- and 1086, 435, and 1522 WON because of penalties

Congratulations to 435 ( go Pack !! ), 1086 ( I like cheese ), and 1522 on a great win !!!!

See everyone in Atlanta !!!!

[Priyadarshy]

yeah when we got 40 points in penalties and lost by 6 points it really put a damper on things but we came back in the next match of the quarters too bad we couldnt finish things off...but it was quite an exciting regional congratulations to the three robots that made it through the wild and competitive regional

[waialua359]

personally, i think the 80" rule was not cool at all to be enforced on a robot that flips over and falls. Its not like they had any control of it once it fell other than pressing the stop button.

[smurfgirl]

Originally Posted by waialua359

personally, i think the 80" rule was not cool at all to be enforced on a robot that flips over and falls. Its not like they had any control of it once it fell other than pressing the stop button.

Did teams get 80" penalties even after pressing E-stop?

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by smurfgirl

Did teams get 80" penalties even after pressing E-stop?

None of the too big robots I saw flopped hit the e-stop.

I have a question for everyone and would like some feedback. Do you prefer that we schedule 8 qual matches for everyone and as a result push you hard to reset and get matches done, or take it easy and more relaxed and only schedule 7?

Wetzel

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Wetzel

None of the too big robots I saw flopped hit the e-stop.

I have a question for everyone and would like some feedback. Do you prefer that we schedule 8 qual matches for everyone and as a result push you hard to reset and get matches done, or take it easy and more relaxed and only schedule 7?

Wetzel

How's it going? Nice to have finally met you there!!!
The only issue we had was not being told ahead of time that we had a match we won that didnt count for us.
We won match #3 and were puzzled why we never got the "W." Our teammates did and we didnt. We actually won 8 matches since we had to play 9 total.
I like playing more matches. However, I think all regionals should have practice times start later and finish later, allowing teams that travel farther to put their robot together in a more relaxed fashion. Local teams bring their tools, thus packing only their robot with a few items. We have always had to take apart quite a bit of our robot in order to fit tools, parts, etc. since we cant afford to bring them all on a plane.
Congrats on your award!! You certainly deserve it.

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by waialua359

How's it going? Nice to have finally met you there!!!
The only issue we had was not being told ahead of time that we had a match we won that didnt count for us.
We won match #3 and were puzzled why we never got the "W." Our teammates did and we didnt. We actually won 8 matches since we had to play 9 total.
I like playing more matches. However, I think all regionals should have practice times start later and finish later, allowing teams that travel farther to put their robot together in a more relaxed fashion. Local teams bring their tools, thus packing only their robot with a few items. We have always had to take apart quite a bit of our robot in order to fit tools, parts, etc. since we cant afford to bring them all on a plane.
Congrats on your award!! You certainly deserve it.

Thanks.
Check 9.3.2 of the rules, the surrogate match is stuck in there. A lot of people missed the change of the surrogate from their last to their third match, we had several teams come ask us about that.
I think I like the idea about shifting practice matches later in the day, but need to think about it some more. I'm still not fully recovered yet.

Wetzel

[DRH2o]

I like 8 matches -- the more the better. We never felt pushed at all. Great work this past weekend. Congratulations on the award.

[Coredesat]

This took practically forever, but I composed a montage of various video I took while walking around the event the other day and set the first half of it to music. Fittingly, the name of the song I used is "Maximum Overdrive".

The quality's not great, but then again, neither is my camera. Hopefully by next year's regional (I won't be volunteering in any other regionals this year - hopefully I'll do more than one next year) I'll have a better one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9pGEo7W9E

[Boone1885]

Hey big thanks to 384 and 612 for picking us. After the last qualifying match when the ground cable came loose, we thought we were done for. Congrats to 384 for the award at the end, that's awesome. Congrats to blue cheese for winning and chairman's. You guys got the double whammy.

[Ian S.]

Penalties were very rough this year. My team 1522 got an avg. of 30 points off a match by penalties in the qualification rounds, and then we won by penalties in the finals! Very interesting competition this year.

Thanks to our alliance 435, and 1086 again. Also thanks to 1793, 1731, and 2108 for being good sports even with a penalty deciding match.

[Mike o.]

First off let me say congratulations to all the etams there, you all were great.

On behalf of Team 1086 I would like to say thank you again to 435 and 1522 for being great alliance partners, we couldn't have done it without you. Good job Teams 1793, 2108 and 1731 for putting up a well fought battle.

Congratulations to both Jeff and Sam for the Volunteer of the Year Award, your ongoing support and contribution to FIRST is greatly appreciated.

After all that is done and said about this weekend, I think that the amount of penalties called this week were much less than those called at regionals last week. It does suck that a good handfull of matches were decided on penalties.

I would have to say, in respose to you Jeff, that I think that teams would rather have more qualification matches, or at least I know that's what I wanted when I was a driver.

Good luck to those going on to other regionals and the Champs, hopefully I will see some of you down in Atlanta.

[kenethare]

Team 435 would like to thank all of the teams that came to the VCU regional for the opportunity to compete with you all. It was a great experience meeting all of the other teams and seeing all the different ideas that you had. we wish you all luck at nationals and next year. we hope to see you all again. we would also like to thank Team 1086 and Team 1522 for a being great partners and thank Teams 1793, 2108, and 1731 for being such great opponents and for their gracious professionalism after the match.

Thank you.

[wilsonmw04]

remember that we can see a lot of these teams again in September at the Robot Rumble.
Let's get enough teams this year to run 3v3 rather than 2v2

[mrmummert]

Good luck to dan and the crew from 1598 and all the others on the way to Atlanta. 1793 had a really good time....so close...We understand..it was us last year.