Thank You 111 and 67!

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

Also, is it just me, or does 67 have so many wins this season that your TBA bar doesn't have room for them all?

Yep, Greg posted about it here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=76901

[Mike Soukup]

The following statement may come off as mean, but I know it won't offend anyone on 971. I believe the reason they weren't picked earlier in the draft is because they weren't that good on Friday, they didn't live up to their potential until Saturday. I know that statement won't offend them because all reports I've gotten from Wildstang members have been that any time they ran into a member of 971 they all got the same question: "why did you pick us?". I think their entire team was surprised by that pick. I was asked this question and I gave a simple answer: "you pick up well, you drive well, and you score well."

Before Atlanta, Raul ranked all the robots in Galileo and 971 was pretty high. I don't remember the specifics of Thursday, but I don't think we saw your robot on the field until late in the day so we didn't know if the ranking was accurate. Then on Friday I believe you had communication problems and didn't move during a match and other matches were unimpressive, so you trickled down our list. Saturday was completely different, you guys rocked. So we bumped you back up near the top of the list. It just goes to show that even if you're having horrible luck early and aren't performing well for a few matches, keep working hard and get the robot performing at its top level, it will be noticed.

Like Paul Copioli said in another thread, we do not scout based on rankings or record. No one on our scouting team even looks at the rankings other than to determine where we are and where we may end up after qualifications. We had no idea that your record was 2-5 or that you were ranked 66th. I found that out when I was going over the rankings Saturday evening.

After watching almost every match on Galileo over the three days of competition, I can say that 971 was easily one of the top 10 robots in the division. Anyone who uses 254 as a regular sparring partner must be good. It was a steal to get you with the last pick of the draft.

[Scott Bahl]

yeah, Friday for us was aweful. skid control and autonomous werent working, had aweful alliance partners, chain snapped on one occasion, everything was going wrong. we didn't get things fixed until saturday.

I haven't been very involved with FIRST this year, so it was only recently that I found out 971 was part of the championship alliance. This is very gratifying but not at all surprising. Team 971 is rock solid in part because of the participation of the Schuh family. Mike Schuh is a NASA Ames engineer. his dad was an engineer and I suspect his three sons will be engineers. I first met this family in 2000, when Mike invited me to his house. His entire family was involved (no not involved) committed to FLL. No TV in the house - just kids doing robots for fun. It was like a real life Dexter's Lab- except the kids weren't nerdy.

The Los Altos Community Robotics team has been continuously cleaning up at Botball and FLL events for years. There is just smart and then there is scary smart. These guys go beyond scary smart.

[WynS]

I felt the desire to post one more thing on this thread. The amazing experience that was Atlanta has continued since we have been home. It has made me feel that although our team has been around for a few years we are still very much rookies. We have been touched by 254’s generosity in the past but the outpouring of support from this community has been tremendous.

We had some things to overcome this year and so for our young team to even go to Atlanta was amazing and to be chosen to be on the winning alliance was more than we could believe possible. But it didn’t stop then. From Paul Copioli making a point to tell our whole team after the finals that we made a difference on our alliance to all the complimentary things said about our team in this forum, the experience has just continued. I happened to run into our school superintendent the other day and he told me that he had been receiving emails of congratulations from people he didn’t know and that he thought one of them was from somewhere in Illinois.

I have always been impressed with the way that FIRST teams help each other but this experience has raised it to a new level in my eyes. I only hope that someday our little team can rise to that level of graciousness.