Hardest Regionals?

[Lil' Lavery]

IMHO Purdue, Great Lakes, and the Midwest regionals are traditionally (or will become in the case of Purdue) the hardest regionals. 45, 71, ect, ect, ect all go there on a regular basis. As for the East Coast, VCU and UTC are probably the toughest in the East. VCU has a TON of underrated teams (Virginia has 55 teams after all, several are traditionally quite good, such as 122, 384, and 388), and is a first week regional, and UTC speaks for itself. The 3 California reginals are all tough as well (and with close to 100 california teams, they should be).
Its true every year the strength of individual teams does change. So I named some of the traditionally harder regionals. All regionals have a few "powerhouses" at them each year. Such as 233 and 118 going to a "weak" (no offense to any of the teams, but it is a weaker and younger regional) colorado regional, or 47 going to Pitts (same deal as colorado).
NONE of the regionals are easy to win, and im sure the balance of power amognst the regionals will change over time (in a couple years many of the young teams in colorado might become quite good for instance). But the midwest regionalS (not the midwest regional, but all the regionals in the Michigan, Indiana, ect area) currently are the strongest of them all, and there really arnt any other regionals that can compare to them.

[Ken Patton]

Originally Posted by xzvrw2

I have been to two regionals all three years I have been on the huskie brigade, Great Lakes and Midwest. In my opinion those two are the hardest regionals to comete at. Lets see here at Great Lakes we got teams 1,33,65,66,67,68,141,279,302,308,322,469,1023 and at Midwest we got teams 45,65,71,79,107,108,111,269,383,461,537,648,903,93 0. Yes i know that other teams at those regionals were really good but these teams here if you say their number in a convo about F.I.R.S.T. then you are going to be like "Man they are a good team." Now dont get me rong, Detroit, Western Michigan, and Boileemaker are all really hard regionals but you have to look at every team there and all of their acomplishments from the past. And I do know that past winnings don't mean much, 2003 national champs then lose to 71 and 494 in division quarter finals, but just take this for an example... when my teams robot didn't do to goot at GLR this year I talked to this mentor from team 1 and he said that he knows that we wernt good here but whwn we go to Midwest we will be a whole heck of alot better. He said that from past accomplishments. wow i realy got off track here. well i'm going to stop. i hope you enjoy reading my post. ha ha ha. And thanks Ken for giving me the chance to change the gripper.

Stevie-
Next we work on your spelling

Nice job dude.

Ken

[santosh]

Of the 3 regionals I have gone to, P'tree, VCU and Boilermaker, Boilermaker dominated over everything I have seen. I think robotwise, nothing could touch Boilermaker. The BEAST basically dominated but still, there were many other good robots.

[Jim Schaddelee]

Now that the regionals are over we should be able to figure this question out .
How about you add all the points scored in all the qualifying matches then divide
by the number of qualifying matches played .I did this for the west Michigan and
the the combined score average per match was 66 points compared to L.A. 48 point.I am not trying to pick on LA but I didn't have time to do them all ,and the LA regional had 70 qualifying matches same as west Michigan so i used them . Maybe we could come up with some other factors to add to this simple equation.

thanks Jim schaddelee
team 107

[slickguy2007]

The boilermaker and new jersey regionals aren't a walk in the park either. From what I have noticed, all the toughest regionals tend to change every year. Some are harder than others one year, then it changes the next. We'll have to see what happens next year, although I am trying to convince my team to sign up for the Midwest regional next year.


GO 1403!!!

[Ctrl Alt Delete]

I'm pretty sure the hardest regional is the new Hampshire regional. There is lots of competition there. We went to the UTC and Philly ones. To bad we didn't win, but we did win in our practice matches.

[IMDWalrus]

Originally Posted by Jim Schaddelee

Now that the regionals are over we should be able to figure this question out .
How about you add all the points scored in all the qualifying matches then divide
by the number of qualifying matches played .I did this for the west Michigan and
the the combined score average per match was 66 points compared to L.A. 48 point.I am not trying to pick on LA but I didn't have time to do them all ,and the LA regional had 70 qualifying matches same as west Michigan so i used them . Maybe we could come up with some other factors to add to this simple equation.

thanks Jim schaddelee
team 107

Who's to say that this year wasn't an exception? We'd have to take data from as many years as it exists for, and then compare the regionals year to year to see if the trend holds up.

But I've had far too much experience with statistics, even as a high school graduate.

Originally Posted by 65_Xero_Huskie

I dont know this for a fact.. but hasnt the past 5 years champs come from Midwest or Great lakes?

It could just be argued that this is because there are so many teams in the Midwest region. In the past three years, 111 (Illinois), 494 (Michigan), and 67 (Michigan) have all been champions. But again, that could just be a fluke.

I don't think there's a fair way to answer this question, even though I don't really need to say that. None of us have experienced all of the regionals, and it's so strongly based on perception that there isn't an answer.

Out of the four I've experienced, though (Western MI, Detroit, Great Lakes, and Palmetto), I'd choose Great Lakes. Size definitely makes a regional more challenging, especially when it comes to scouting, and any competition that hosts as many long-established teams as GL usually does is bound to be a difficult one.

[Beth Sweet]

Just to throw it out there, maybe the reason that a lot of Midwest teams have won is that, well, there's a lot of them? And yes, I know that there are a lot of teams in California too, but that's just CA. There's oogles and oogles of teams in Michigan, Indiana and the surrounding area (I don't feel like typing out all of the states). I say that the reason the Midwest produces so many winners is proportional to the vast number of teams that exist there. Just my thoughts...

[rocketdawg3000]

I think that the florida regional is the hardest because we had swamp thing(179), think pink(233), spam, metal in motion(343), tech tigers(1251), freedom force, burning magnitos(342). We finished 2nd there but it wasn't easy getting to the final round!

[Vu2000]

We might as well just call the IRI a regional or just simply championships after the real thing. With the caliber of the competition at IRI it seems every year and by looking at the team numbers this year, it's almost ridiculous how many regional and championship (past and present) winners there are. If I had my choice of which competition to watch robot-wise every year, it seems like the IRI would win hands down. If only NASA would broadcast it...

[Beth Sweet]

I think that the later regionals are the toughest ones (yes, I know, I'm umbrellaing) especially to those who attend them and only them. This year we attended the WMR and (along with some fantastic teams) having had no regional experience made it super tough to be competitive. Everyone else already knew how to play the game and we were just starting out. So I say that the toughest regionals are the ones in 5th and 6th week when most have figured out some of the tricks of the game.

[Mike_45]

I do have to agree with others that the Midwest Regional is one of the harder regionals just for the fact that there are many teams there with much experience such as team 71, 111,45,65,79, 269, and much more, but those were just some that stuck out in my mind. Also There were some really good robots @ the Midwest..
Congrats to Teams 111, 71, and 537

[65_Xero_Huskie]

I dont know this for a fact.. but hasnt the past 5 years champs come from Midwest or Great lakes?

[Team75electric]

I think that Trenton was very hard this year with team 56, 75, cyber sonics, 25, and a ton of other hard teams this competition was very hard.

[JackN]

A tie between Sacremento and Detroit. Both regionals had 4 einstein teams.