2009 Philadelphia Regional

[Dillon Compton]

The Philadelphia regional is always a fantastic experience for us, but this year was particularily exciting. Going in I was unsure about the (temporary) venue change, the lack of some familiar teams, and our spotty record in NJ.

None of these things, luckily, made the tiniest amount of difference this weekend.

Going 6-0 on Friday was fantastic - going into Saturday undefeated is a brilliant feeling that I hope I have at all FIRST events in the future... This is a nice change of pace for our team and I think we really showed what our robot and especially our driver are capable of. We expected to do far better than we did in NJ, but it was gratifying to show everyone else that we weren't just crazy.

1279 and 834 thank you for a fantastic run in eliminations. With a little more luck (loosing by 2 points one match and 6 points the next is very close) we'd have taken it to the finals and put some heat on the winning alliance. I hope we managed to make 103, 1153 and 708 sweat a little during the semis and I really think that if we did it again it might go either direction. Very evenly matched alliances. We got shut down by 708 in that last match and coulden't pull through for you guys.


222, 316, and 11 - you guys were tough. Our first-round loss had us worried and we barely squeaked by in the second round. Good defense, especially from 316. 11 and 222 you stepped up the scoring and slammed our trailers more than any of our qualifying match opponents. Something clicked on our alliance between our 2nd and 3rd matches and it definitiely showed - without that luck on our part you could easily have taken it to the semis or finals.

103, 1153, and 708 - well fought. You guys were a powerhouse of an alliance and (rightfully so) the 103-1153 team-up worried us from the moment it happened. You both showed fantastically this weekend. 708, you did a fantastic job shutting us down in the second semi-final match. It was frustrating to watch from the stands as we sat there with a full hopper, unable to get even a few moon rocks into a trailer. You did what you needed to defend against us and took the match because of it. As I said before, a fantastic, powerhouse alliance. I was frankly surprised you did not take the regional.

The rest of the alliances (from what few matches I saw) solid games and great strategy. Very impressed all around.


Fantastic regional, fantastic teams, and fantastic people. As usual the Philadelphia Regional was incredibly competitive with a deep field, had good, vibrant energy about it (somewhat dissapated due to the size of the liacouras center when compared with the Drexel Atheletic Center), and was overall one of my best FIRST experiences to date.