The match results, final standings, and awards are now available on the FIRST website for Lonestar!
I noticed a new “Gracious Professionalism Award” for Lonestar. What’s the story? I don’t remember this before nor do I see it for any other regional this year. It sounds like a good idea though. Was this something special just for Lonestar? What outstanding GP did 57, 434, and 846 show? Sounds like the making of a great new award for next year!
Congrats to all the award winning teams!
Kymber, I know nothing about the new Merrell Center but the good ol’ Reliant Center is hard to beat. I wonder though, when Lonestar returns to the Reliant in 2009 could it be a two field super-regional? It sure seems like Lonestar and the Reliant Center could handle it. Could it be??? Me hopes!
Yes the Gracious Professionalism Award is a unique award that was started at the Lonestar regional. I do not remember why each of the teams one, but I do remember when the announced Team 57’s they mentioned that they helped translate for the Brazilian Team 1772
This is an award that BP sponsors for the Lone Star regional, we went to our judges and asked them what they felt wasn’t really covered by the awards. They told us we really needed an award to recognize the teams that exhibit outstanding gracious professionalism, they said that we teach and encourage gracious professionalism but there really wasn’t an award to recognize those teams that took it to heart. Team 57 not only translated for Brazil, Team 1772, they provided transportation to and from their hotel as well as meals during their stay. As for Teams 434 and 846 I am not positive what exactly was said about those teams, I was having to run around and deal with things for the regional so I missed most of the awards ceremonies. I do know that 846 really seemed to be one of the favorite teams among the other teams, I heard quite the roar from the field when they won the BP Gracious Professionalism award Saturday.
Reliant is absolutely capable of handling a super regional and the Lone Star Committee is more than ready to turn Lone Star into a super regional. Now here’s the but, to have a super regional you have to have 80 teams. We had 52 teams this year so we know that with all our Lone Star teams out there recruiting teams and helping them find funding we could achieve super regional status. As of right now we are not planning a super regional but if our teams pull together and recruit enough teams I’m sure we could have a super regional in the not too distant future.
This venue is not large enough to accomodate a super regional nor are we ready for a super regional. We are REQUIRED to have 80 teams for a super regional and we will only be accomodating 45-50 teams maximum at this venue. This venue will NOT accomodate 80 teams and 2 fields. Once we return to Reliant in 2009 if everything comes together just perfectly, the committee has been able to raise the funds, and teams have recruited enough teams that we have 80 teams then we MIGHT have a super regional. This is a big job and will require everyone to work together and get the word about FIRST out.
Kymber, this sounds encouraging that Lonestar might one day be a super regional. I know the Reliant Center can handle it if another section were opened up for a larger pit area. Please correct me if I am wrong but isn’t the number of teams at a regional more of a limit imposed by FIRST rather than how many the regional can get to attend? I have always thought that FIRST specified a number of available slots and that was it. At least the FIRST regional registration webpage makes it appear that way to me. X number of slots - Y number of teams signed up = Z number of open slots. I would think that since there were 13 new rookie teams at Bayou this year just from Mississippi and Louisiana that by 2009 it would be very possible to make 80 teams at Lonestar. Lonestar is a great regional and since it is usually the last weekend I would think many teams would love to make it their 2nd or 3rd regional if FIRST would open up the slots. I can honestly see it happening and hope it does!
Actually the limit on many teams a regional can have register is set according to how many teams the venue can accomodate. We will have to expand the pit area but we do have the ability to do that.
Well, I guess it won’t quote a quote within a quote…
But… Judges’ Award- 16
Hey does anyone have video of qualifying matches at the LSR? I don’t know the match number but I would like these ones:
9:50 AM (Red 441 1561 1859) (Blue 16 1867 1480)
and
10:38 AM (Red 1772 16 653) (Blue 1867 1480 231)
I’m working on this. Parsing the matches out is a slightly tedious* process for me, and I have a lot of paper grading to catch up with before professors kill me. Expect them to start going up tomorrow afternoon/evening if my profs haven’t caught me and nailed me to a desk by then.
*Only because I’m so picky. I’m re-encoding the elims I posted to SOAP earlier. I’ve got a better solution for removing interlacing now, and the team numbers are actually legible.
Kevin, thank you for doing this…it is much appreciated. Here’s hoping that you are not nailed to a desk. 
While I’m at it, I’d like to ask my customers’ opinions on this encoding change I’m making. I’m uploading one of the newly encoded quarterfinals videos. It will be called tx_qf1m1alt.wmv. If you guys could compare it to the original tx_qf1m1.wmv file and PM me your preference, I’d appreciate it. I’d like to make sure I’m not making things worse. For those that have forgotten: SOAP Lone Star Archives
Encoding differences:
Original
Uses drop field deinterlacing. Moving objects have crisp borders, but we’re basically dumping half the resolution by dropping every other line. Thus the blurry letters.
Alt
Uses blend deinterlacing. Moving objects have blurry borders. Interlaced fields are blended together preserving info and keeping detail in stationary objects, like the text.
Basically, I’m looking for if the motion blur is distracting or troublesome. looking around 1:45 in the vids is a good example.
Kevin S.
Well we couldn’t have had more fun at Lone Star. I wanna thank everyone that helped make lone star a success, and I want to thank our alliance partners for showing us a good time. I’ll never forget Brazil leading our team in our cheer. Man it was fun. Congrats to 118, 1745,and 476.
Kevin,
Thanks for posting the videos. I found the alt version looked much better. Its much more beneficial to be able to read numbers off of the robots then to have no motion blur. Just my opinion, but regardless I’ll be happy with whichever version of matches get uploaded as long as i can tell red from blue. =)
Thanks a bunch Kevin! I’ve done enough video editing myself to know how mind numbingly tedious it can be. I’m trying to get used to some new contacts, so I can’t really focus well enough to give a decent opinion on the encoding formats. So I’ll go with the majority on that one.
That’s good enough for me. I’ll swap them all out this morning and get on finishing the quals.
Eek. I have all of my team’s matches (16) recorded… and since we just happen to be in both of those matches, I do have them. But, I follow our robot around the entire time. If you still want them, let me know… I’ll try to dig them out. hah.
I love the setup at Reliant Area. It is easy to get to and from the stands and everything is very close to the venue.
Thanks! If you find a way to post them, I would love to take a look