Engineering Challenge- Spring Loaded Kicker Edition

[IKE]

Working through a possible issue with our practice bot, I thought it made an interesting engineering challenge.

So you are at competition with your spring loaded kicker.
You have a motor that winds the kicker to the motor/gearbox stall point (motor stops before mechanical limits) with a quick release mechanism that allows the kicker to kick. You kick several shots and notice that the it would be good to kick the ball a little further (about 10%). All you can do is add or subtract spring rate. Should you:

A. More spring rate = more betterer!
B. Less rate is more when it comes to springs!
C. Nothing, no matter what you do it will stay the same.
D. Ask the pit admin for some of those frictionless bearings you've heard so much about.
E. Blame the programmer.

Please do the math: