The Palmetto Regional's New Location

[JohnFogarty]

That's what you have my sister for.

[team1102a]

Originally Posted by John_1102

That's what you have my sister for.

So there is no misundertanding.... John's sister pulls my "Cheat sheet cards" before every match so I can spout out all kinds of trivia and items of interest for each team introduction. With 65 teams I need all the help I can get.

[MOE]

HELLOOOOooooooo
Well we made it and now its time for the fun to start.. You will hear and see us with out a problem and with TJ's eyes it will see you....TO Hope to met new teams that we have never played with before. Good luck to all I think this will be a fun reg. Lets have a FIRST great time what a HOOTTTT this will be.
TEAM 88 TJ2 oh yeah???? OH YEAH !!!!
MOE TYE-DYE for ever

[Billfred]

What a day, what a day. We've worked through more electrical problems than we've seen in a long time today (our cRIO kept losing power and rebooting), but we're pretty sure those problems are behind us. Hopefully we can do a little more convincing tomorrow and get the threepeat!

[team1102a]

i appreciate all the support i got from the teams with remedies for my hoarseness. Mints, hi\ugs, candy, water, fruit punch, cough drops, etc.

i have had a cold all week and i finally caught up with me.
Ted and Jack did a great job with the MC and Game Announcer jobs.

As of 9:30 pm Friday I can talk again and plan to rest my voice to be ready to do the elims on Saturday afternoon.

[EricDrost]

Originally Posted by Billfred

What a day, what a day. We've worked through more electrical problems than we've seen in a long time today (our cRIO kept losing power and rebooting), but we're pretty sure those problems are behind us. Hopefully we can do a little more convincing tomorrow and get the threepeat!

Just cozy up to whoever ends up in 1st seed tomorrow. That strategy seems to work.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by EricDrost

Just cozy up to whoever ends up in 1st seed tomorrow. That strategy seems to work.

Don't worry, we're saving that seat nice and warm for you guys

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by EricDrost

Just cozy up to whoever ends up in 1st seed tomorrow. That strategy seems to work.

Originally Posted by Wing

Don't worry, we're saving that seat nice and warm for you guys

Well, seeing that first backup team is looking highly unlikely...

Hopefully we'll give y'all a show in our three matches today.

[EricDrost]

Congratulations to all the teams this weekend! Everybody was fantastic and it was a pleasure to work with every team we were aligned with.

I love this new venue. This was one of the greatest events I've ever been to.

[Akash Rastogi]

Aside from the regular congratulations, BIG congrats to 4451 for being such an excellent rookie team. What an awesome machine and strategy. Glad that you are qualified for St. Louis.

[Brandon Holley]

It's a special kind of awesome to see the team that helped shaped you go out and perform at the top of their game. Congrats to my home team, MORT, for battling the demons and pulling out an impressive victory!!

Kudos to 11s partners as well. As we all know, these events are won as a team and that's exactly what you guys pulled off.


GO MORT!

-Brando

[ttldomination]

I'm proud of my team in that we ended as the first seed, but it seems that our luck had to run out at some time. The winning alliance (and even the finalists) were truly brilliant and the cream of the crop at the event.

Now, for the usual thank yous:

@2363: Thanks for joining our alliance. I had hoped we could put up the same numbers as our qualification run, but alas it was not to be so. On a slightly separate note, you guys are one of the nicest teams I've had the honor to work with. Good luck at Virginia.

@539: Thanks for joining our alliance and trying to fix your errors. It takes a lot to admit that you're not going to hold up and take a seat.

@2914: You guys are truly an exceptional defensive team. It was an honor to play against and with you guys.

@11: Thanks for being up front with us about alliance selections. I suppose if we had taken your advice, this post would have a slightly different tone, but I hate to dwell on what could have been.

- Sunny G.

[mandrews281]

I just have to share my favourite moment from Palmetto. It's our last match of the qualifying and we (281) are playing with 1598, and 4748 against teams 435/3140/3506. It's a tough match for us (final seedings: 24th/30th/64th vs 4th/46th/21th). We play some tough defense on 435, 1598 does our scoring, and I have no clue what 4748 did. As the match ends, the unofficial score shows 25-14 our favor.

We get a bit excited to have done so well against 435 and one of the kids on 4748 (I think he was acting as coach) starts asking "did we win? did we win?" We start to calm him down by saying we don't know yet and it really looks like the opposing teams has three 10 point hangs, so probably not. The refs come out to inspect the hangs, we watch, and the thumbs go down for all three hangs. They are all touching the ground, so we start to cheer a bit more. The kids asks again "did we win? did we win?" and we say, yes it looks like we did.

He goes crazy with joy. He starts jumping around "we won!!, we won!". It's like he just won the finals on Einstein!! His team mates are trying to unplug their drivers station and he jumps up on their back, "we won, we won". By this time, I heading to retrieve our cart; but I can't stand to watch this kid not get any love back. So I hold out my arms for a hug. He takes a couple of steps towards me and JUMPS into my arms. I have my arms wrapped around his waist and his legs are wrapped around my waist. I think there were some more "we won"s in there too. It's a good thing he was a bean pole, because if he had any mass to him, we would have been on the floor.

A second or so later, he's down and I'm on my way to get the cart. I start talking to his team mate who also has cart duty, and I start to put 2 & 2 together. This is one of those over-whelmed rookie teams. Any veteran team recognizes them. A drivable plywood base, with poles on the corners which held plastic meshing block discs. No dumper, no climbing, and the drivers are still figuring out how to drive it because it's only been running since practice day. They were 0-7. They had lost a couple of close matches, but had also lost a few blow outs. This was their last match of the season and they had WON IT!! The kid had won on Einstein!

I doubt anyone from 4748 reads Chief Delphi regularly, and I still don't know his name. But the joy in this kid just brought tears to my eyes as I read this to my wife, and it has made my season.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by mandrews281

I doubt anyone from 4748 reads Chief Delphi regularly, and I still don't know his name. But the joy in this kid just brought tears to my eyes as I read this to my wife, and it has made my season.

I saw this as I was posting up to film one of 2815's matches, and I wish I was filming! I've seen that raw enthusiasm on just a few occasions, most of them involving the finals. (I recall a kid from the long-defunct 803 back in 2006, who happened to walk by inspection right as 1293 nipped its weight problems. He was just as psyched as I was.)

2815's performance at Palmetto was not to our expectations. We came in wanting to kick butt and get our third straight Palmetto title, but our problems were just too much to merit being picked. Our laundry list for South Florida is already underway--we've got a lot to do to punch our ticket to St. Louis.

I'd like to give thanks to all the teams that gave us help and pointers as we worked through our problems.

Shoutout to MORT for beating us to a third win at Palmetto. We'll race you to four.

Additional shootout to ROBOTZ Garage for their Rookie All-Star win and their comeback from that terrifying fall in SF2-1. A lot of teams would've thrown it in after that, but these guys took a timeout and parked that robot right back up on Level 3. Orlando had better watch out.

Time to lick our wounds and make our plans for South Florida. See some of you there, see some more of you at SCRIW!

[ttldomination]

To comment purely on the venue,

It was excellent to say the least. With 65 teams, seating was plentiful, the pits were nice and open, and I really cannot think of a major complaint.

One thing that was extremely off-putting was the single doorway between the stands and the pits. Not entirely what the rationale behind that was, but it was frustrating to say the least. Not to mention that I almost ran into someone going the other way a few times.

- Sunny G.