2009 Long Island Regional

[mtaman02]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Here's a message from our Regional Director about SBPLI.
In addition to the stats Bill, our FTA, has provided below, I'd like to add that we didn't start a single match without all teams working with the field. Batteries were unplugged (or missing entirely in one case), robot radios were unplugged, robots were not turned on, Driver Stations failed (but never during a match), but the queuers and Bharat made sure everyone was plugged in and powered up before we allowed the match to go on. Everyone learned and got better and better as the matches went on.

Our match turnaround began to run so fast on Saturday that we had to actually slow down some of them to give the system time to post the scores.

The only team that missed matches was the one that burst into flames, and even they were back on the field playing by Saturday thanks to the hard work of inspectors and fellow teams.

I don't know how Brian C's voice heldup over three days of non-stop talking, but he provided the most excellent play-by-play and announcing I've heard at SBPLI!
(253/353, who's counting?)

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Hello Team Leaders -

I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for your help in expediting the match process at the SBPLI Long Island Regional. The stats below from our Field Technical Advisor, Bill Edelman, speak for themselves. If you see any of the technical and field re-set individuals, thank them also for the part they played.

a. to this point (with only 3 regionals remaining), SBPLI is the only regional to achieve 85 matches (the next closest were Philly & Conn, each played 80 total matches)

b. only 4 other regionals provided 11 matches per team (St Louis, Boilermaker, Hawaii, and Bayou - each with only 36, 35,33,31 competing teams respectively)

c. of the regionals with between 44 and 49 teams (there are 10 regionals that fit that criteria), only Israel managed to offer 10 matches per team, 4 others offered 9 per team, and the remaining 4 regionals offered 8 matches per team or less

d. 6 regionals had to play straight through lunch on Friday, and of those, only one (Israel) played more than 8 matches - this speaks to the efficiency of our scorers, refs, field reset staff, Mark, and above all the cooperation of teams themselves

It's teamwork in action - thanks for your help!

Janet

Oh yea go FTA, Go Field Supv. Go Head Ref. Go ScoreKeeper, Go FTAA its your B-day =).... I'm glad this was posted I def. knew we were the only ones doing 11, any other regional that attempted had a smaller team size. Good job to all those that were Key Volunteers working the field, reffing and providing FIRST Tech Advice!.

Just so teams know that attended our turnaround time was between 5 & 6 min. each round on paper First half of the day wsa 5 the second half was 6 but b/c of the excellent and knowledgeable staff we worked with everyone did their job did it well and assisted in any field errors before they match started. If you should see Mark McLeod or Bill Edelman, Bharat or Jim Stephenson down in Atl. they would def. be one out of dozens that worked the event that should get a hug. I too also should get a hug but in time =). It's only b/c of them that I learned so much =).

[Mark McLeod]

I'll give you a hug next time I see you. You really deserve it!
Even though you gave me a thumbs down all the time, you always followed it with a double thumbs up!

This set of statistics was posted by the Seattle FTA. Note his comment by Long Island.

Venue Matches each x Teams = Good Crew Number
LV          9                   48                  432
Colorado 7                  48                   336
Seattle     7                  64                   448 !!
Sac          9                  44                   396
Haw      11                   34                   374
Toronto   8                   59                   472
Palm        9                  44                    396
Long Is  11                  46                    506 Wow
Tex         7                   63                    441
Boil       11                   35                    380
Chesap    7                  55                     385
Sil Val      8                 47                      376
Portland    7                54                      378

[mtaman02]

Nice, I like those numbers =)

[fatjoe3833]

I feel that this was one of the best run regionals I have ever attended, especially taking into account the new FMS and a larger field of teams than usual for SBPLI. All of the volunteers did a a great job and I want to especially thank Bill, Mike, Brian, Mark, Bharat, Jim, the MC"s and all of the field crew for their hard work.

Part of the delay in getting scores posted had to do with the design of the scoring controller. Unless the orbit ball count was obviously correct, the scorers had to do a manual count of the balls and then correct and confirm the scrore. However, the ethernet cables for the scoring controllers were very short so we had to leave them by the corner of the field. By the time I was ready to go back to my controller to enter the score the new robots were already being brought out onto the field, making it difficult to access the controllers. So, we decided to report the corrected scores directly to the scorekeeper in order to speed up the process.

By the time elimination matches started on Saturday, we had developed a better system in which we staggered personnel entry onto the field. First the scorers did their counts and then the field reset crew and team members entered the field. This allowed everything to run more smoothly.

In the future, I think that wireless scoring controllers or a longer ethernet cable could solve these issues.

I hope to work with all of you again next year.

-"Big Joe" Official Scorer

P.S. I had to leave during the award ceremony on Friday. If anyone has a picture of the cake, I would appreciate it if you could post it. Thanks

[mtaman02]

Unfortunately every regional had the same issue. The controllers by field design were only suppose to come out that far. Next year hopefully the GDC will chage that and give you guys more room to walk around with.