Notes from Sacramento - Awsome Upset.

It was a Blast - St. Francis - the legendary team that had their robot built for them during the competition two years ago was in the winning alliance that defeated the mighty Cheesy Poofs! I drove up Saturday, so didn't see the Friday comp. As a result of the large number of matches for each robot, there was a lot of busted machines by the end of Friday night. I think all but 2 or 3 were able to run on Saturday.


An alliance led by 692 and 662 with simpler fast, smaller robots, out-drove and out-pushed an alliance led by 295 and 254 to win. I didn't see a lot of stacking during the seeding or elimination. Just too much effort to make or defend a stack, and too easy to smash or clean out all the boxes from an opponent zone with a fast, small robot. Most of the teams that did well in the finals had some sort of brake or mechanism to help them stay on the ramp. Autonomy is real important in seeding, but not so much in the finals. It doesn't matter if you get all 29 boxes to your side if your opponents can push'em all off the field, and then knock you off the hill. Likewise the ability to go under did not appear that valuable. The highest seeding score occurred when one or both robots on one side were disabled and the teams had an agreement to run-up both scores. Other WRRF veterans who did well were MVRT, Los Altos and Woodside.
One benefit of a small regional - all but 3 teams were in the finals.