Michigan State Championships

[Ed Law]

Thank you for all the kind words from 1918, 67 and 2337. I watched the videos of all the finals matches over and over again today. There was so much happening at the same time. I can only watch one or two robots at a time. Hence I have to watch each match more than once. All I can say was it was incredibly exciting no matter what the outcome was.

Thanks again to 1918 and 469. You had made our day. It was depressing during the qualifying rounds for us because we did everything right, scoring 6-8 balls per match and lost quite a few because of a non-working partner robot or unnecessary penalties. One of those matches was our own fault. We tied 217's alliance in that match but our driver accidentally touched the tower during finale even though none of our opponents were trying to hang.

Being a relatively new team, another thing I need to learn to deal with is partners grossly exaggerating what they can do, wanting us to follow their strategy and then not delivering what they promised.

I know this has been discussed many times before in other posts. We use student drive coach on our team. Our drive coach discusses strategies and negotiate starting positions with other teams. He is very capable in working things out with other teams and I almost never have to step in even when I was there. Last year in our rookie year, nobody believed he was a freshman in high school. I am very proud of him as his coach and as his dad.