A Cinderella story?

[Zach Purser]

When our team puts together the list of who we would like to pick, we do have discussions of "I really like their team, they really seem to get it, let's move them up the list," or "we haven't seen anyone besides the mentors ever work on their robot, move them down a few notches," so it's not just about performance. We want to win, but we would prefer to do so with a great partner team, not just a great partner robot.

About picking lower ranked teams, one of the coolest things I've seen was an odd pick at VCU probably 6 or 7 years ago. None of us understood the pick until the first alliance match. We barely even recognized the lower ranked robot, the alliance captain had built a part to literally bolt on top of their partner robot. They had been scouting for a team with a solid drive train and enough underweight for the part to be added. I don't even know if their partners were aware of this plan before they went back to the pits.