On behalf of 2338, I’d like to give a congratulations to all teams in attendance, but especially:
2451, 1625, and 5125 for a great win and 2 tough matches.
Our alliance partners and fellow finalists 1732 and 3936.
Another congrats to 1732 for Chairman’s and 4645 for Engineering Inspiration.
As someone who interviewed for the Dean’s List, I definitely want to congratulate Arpan from 3061, and Jacqueline from 4645.
Thank you so much for the kind words.
Sadly, even if we could make it from the wait list, we wouldn’t be able to attend. Our sponsors will only cover the entrance fee if we qualify.
It’s sad that my time as a student is now over… I was hoping for it to last all the way through April…
We had a great time practicing with 2451 and 1625, and had a great time competing with all other teams at Midwest.
Hopefully I see everyone again as a mentor of a Chicago team, seeing as I am going to school at DePaul.
I will hopefully see some of you again as a spectator at STL.
What’s the status of Illinois and Indiana joining the District system? Has anything official been announced? I enjoyed Midwest this year (and in 2011 when we last played there) and had a lot of fun at Boilermaker in 2012 and 2013. I’ll miss those events and all the teams that we got to meet down there.
Huge congrats to the winning alliance. Even before Midwest started, some of our scouting team figured that if 2451 and 1625 teamed up the Regional would be over. It was a lot of fun getting to play in elims with 2338 again. Thanks for making us a part of your alliance. Thanks to 3936, too, for the great assist work. I’m surprised that you were still available to be picked as late as you were.
I got to see a lot of good coopertition and gracious professionalism in the pits this weekend. Seeing a crowd of mentors and students from several teams help Team Borusan re-do their electrical system (which wasn’t too scary once that huge custom circuit slathered in solder was removed) and work on getting the robot into a legal configuration despite the language barrier and types of parts that nobody had ever seen before was great. Getting to help work on 4551’s pneumatic system was fun, too. The huge crowd in 5125’s pit during lunch on Saturday was another highlight. I’m sure that I missed a lot of GP, but those are the big examples that I saw.
Finally, I look forward to seeing a lot of you in a few weeks in Saint Louis! It’ll be fun getting to see great teams like 1625, 2451, and 111 at another event before their state is potentially shut down to Wisconsin teams.
Sorry, just can’t agree with this statement. I was there and saw just the opposite. I saw over zealous refs who do not know all the rules. It appeared that the number of games with significant fouls was high until quarter finals. The number of field resets was unacceptable. Young children (no matter how cute) should not be handling field elements and jeopardizing the fate of teams who have worked hard to get there.
You mean like an autonomous ball resting inside of the goal and bouncing back into the field once the match started forcing a replay? Or mysterious technical fouls being awarded after matches ended that change results?
How about damage inside of the perimeter apparently not meaning anything? Because the 7 refs somehow “didn’t see it”? I could start ranting about specific matches, but, like Wes said in his post, “After a weekend of wanting to blame things on someone else” and after what I thought was a very well refereed Wisconsin Regional, I am really frustrated by a lot of calls. I can’t really blame the refs for not being able to handle the huge burden that they were handed, but some of it was aggravating. I’m looking forward to when match videos are posted so that I can raise my blood pressure again.
I was in no way saying there weren’t mistakes or that every match was called perfectly. It just seemed like compared to a lot of regionals this season, it ran better, especially compared to earlier this season (week 1 and week 3 anyone?).
If you would like to see a lot of replays pile up, I suggest checking out what happened at the Las Vegas regional this year.
Ya I kinda agree with Sunshine. Hammond actually lost a couple matches because the opposing alliance pinned their ball against the wall for about 40 seconds and no fouls whatsoever were called. Wildstang, Winnovation, and a couple other teams were penalized for high-speed ramming when it was obvious the opposing alliance purposely got in their way when they were traversing down the field. One of the drivers from the Hilltoppers specifically asked if this exact scenario would be considered high-speed ramming and the head ref said no. There was quite a bit of inconsistency unfortunately and some of our scouts said that there were about two or three matches that should of been won by the other alliance but improper scoring and/or lack of calling fouls affected who won.
I agree that some calls were bad, and they affected us greatly. In match 72, against our future alliance partners 1732, we lost by 49 points because we received a g27 tech for ramming. We were about 4-5 feet away in low gear and hit someone. It pushed them upwards slightly, so they called it “high-speed” ramming. It is what it is, but that win would have made us the #1 seed…
Also in eliminations, i think every match we had fouls called on our alliance, and as far as I know, we didn’t do very much wrong, besides the one opponent ball possession. They didn’t change any of the outcomes, but it was just annoying and seemingly unjust.
Semis 2.2 was just plain unbelievable. 1732 we entered by someone, (I believe 71), and had their ziptied battery unplugged and ziptie broken, and a pneumatic fitting broken.
All matches probably went the way they should, but weird calls were a constant annoyance throughout the competition.
High speed ramming was certainly called differently here than at Wisconsin. At Wisconsin is was simply full speed collisions that were called. Who they awarded the penalty to seemed random. At Midwest it seemed that they penalized teams for hits on another team that resulted in obvious damage. In our match against each other our partners battery was lifted out of them by the hit. I don’t think it should have been high speed ramming but the match might have turned out differently had they not been disabled for their battery hanging out.
As far as the semis match you referenced with 71. I think the fault for the collision was on both teams but it happened that 71’s pickup was down at the time. Though we had damage inside the perimeter after nearly every elims match such as broken cylinders, cracked fittings, ripped LED strands, and our Thunder Flaps being nearly ripped off their mounts. These damages were shown to refs and they just said they did not see it happen.
I certainly hope all the refs are on the same page at CMP. Even if they are calling things a bit differently, I just want to know in advance.
I was personally thrilled 3936 was still there at #23. Their defensive and driving ability was impressive at NY Tech Valley and when they added their manipulator at Midwest, I knew they would be a fantastic alliance partner. I was surprised the “Assist Bot” wasn’t picked earlier.
Thanks again to 2338 for picking us. I thoroughly enjoyed talking 3rd partner before alliance selections and strategy during our elimination run. Hopefully we see you at some offseason competitions this summer as you built your best robot this year.
In terms of some of the calls, there were some weird calls and some missed penalties. I’ve never attended a perfect regional. At the end of the day, however, the best two teams and the best alliance won. The refs would have had to really screw up to keep them from claiming gold. While I wish we were at full strength to give them a close match, I have no problem losing to 2451/1625/5125. Congrats, you all certainly earned it.
Yes, HUGE shout out to both 1625 and 5125 for their incredible contributions to the #1 seeded alliance’s success in eliminations. As an alliance, we far surpassed the expectations our scouting directive group had when we hashed out our pick lists.
DohertyBilly and Smitty1707 spoke on this earlier, but for those of you who haven’t already heard, 5125 is a part of an FTC oriented organization who expanded to FRC this year. They had an FTC competition in Iowa as well as the Midwest Regional in the same weekend and ended up sending essentially a drive team comprised of seventh graders, a mentor who had previously been a part of 4096, and a parent of a student on the team to attend Midwest. On Thursday morning their robot was in violation of R3 A (the total length of the FRAME PERIMETER sides may not exceed 112 in.), and by Saturday afternoon they were shutting down some of the best teams and alliances that Midwest had to offer. On behalf of team 2451 and the #1 seeded alliance at Midwest, I would like to thank all of those, both individuals and teams, who helped contribute to their success at Midwest.
My thoughts exactly. After three straight regionals, and three straight PWNAGE Ultimate Alliance Partner Awards going to 1625, we were finally able to turn PWNavation into Winnage. Watching the two of us work together on the offensive end was nothing short of awe inspiring. From the stands it looked as if four hands of the same mind were controlling our robots.
We really enjoyed playing against the 2338/1732/3936 alliance in the finals. Those were some of the most intense matches of Midwest. We at PWNAGE are very proud to say that we had to go through the #2 seeded alliance at Midwest in order to claim our first ever regional championship.
As far as the refing at Midwest and in this game in general, I think we all can agree that this year refs have a lot of tough calls to make, and while they may not get them all right, they are trying to make the right calls to the best of their abilities. At Midwest there were a couple of times where contact inside the frame perimeter calls were missed such as the unfortunate contact resulting in damage to 1732, a couple of possession calls could have been called as Jibri Wright mentioned, and a few issues with the grey area that high-speed collision calls fall under could have been handled differently. I sympathize with anyone who feels they are victim of a bad call. The feeling you’re left with after those matches and sometimes on after those regionals is one of the worst, but just as wesbass23 said all we can do is hope that the refs are all on the same page moving forward.
Well, this is almost exactly what I was going to say lol. 3936 was one of those team numbers you almost don’t want to write down because you are so sure they will be picked by time you have a chance to. Teaming up with them and 1732 was completely necessary if we wanted any hope of beating the world class 2451/1625/5125 alliance. Congrats to them and especially pwnage on their long overdue win.
Also, so proud of 4096 for finishing with the 4th seed and really coming to play in elims. Thanks to 71 for the dominant offensive play and to 2506, it was very gracious to risk your spot in eliminations in order to update everyone on the status of your bot, was definitely the right choice to stick with you.
Overall, great regional, we obviously would have loved to qualify for championships but the best teams really did win and the run they had in elims was nothing short of art, must have been something in that Winnebago water.
HUGE shout out too 2451 and 5125 for our first win in five years! Winnovation decided we will start selling bottled air from our shop to sprinkle on bots! We knew the #2 alliance would be a challenge and we were right. You gave us a run for our money! But we are excited to once again go back to STL for the first time in 3 years! Can’t wait to see everyone down there on the field!
For those of you who are sad because you think your season is over - gotta put in a quick plug for R2OC, being held in Rockford on July 26th. You can still play Aerial Assist if you wanna! www.r2oc.org/index.html
I hope this isn’t too maudlin, but this really was one of those regionals where you wish there could be more than one winning alliance, because there were more than three teams of championship character and robotic abilities. There were several other teams that, but for small twist of fate, coulda/shoulda won. Gear It Forward, The Beast, Hilltoppers, Flaming Monkeys, UPS come to mind immediately, but you can all add to the list.
Always good to be in a competition with Flaming Monkeys, because you can hear people in the stands yelling things like, “Shoot, Monkey, Shoot!” And Flaming Bear Squad NEEDS to be a band name:)
Finally, I want to acknowledge Team 5350, Chicago Hope. These guys came in with no prior experience or even exposure to FRC, and by lunch on Saturday realized they could do this, they could play with “the big boys”, and they are pumped for next year.
. . . Although I do apologize to you for pronouncing C.O.R.E.'s hometown wrong a few times. I asked a team member early on how to say “Waukesha,” (I’m not from the Midwest) but I was mostly concerned with the second syllable, not the last one.
Another apology for not calling FIRST Responders by their preferred name and instead using the one in the FMS (BisonBots) during their first elim match; I wrote the new name in on all of my announcer sheets, but got new ones for elims and didn’t have the chance to fix them before my mind was turned off so I could frantically get through sponsors as fast as I could.
Thanks for the shout-out, nonetheless! And thanks to everyone else who thanked me for announcing and volunteering this weekend; it’s my favorite volunteer role! I went to three regionals this year, and Midwest was super fun to watch, as always!
I really enjoyed your announcing. I liked that you told what the penalties were and what they meant.
I overheard that you might be coming to the R2OC this summer?
I just want to say Congratulations to 2451, 1625, and 5125. What a great alliance! We knew all along that those finals matches were going to be tough. If we had to lose, I’m glad we lost to friends. The teamwork and coordination between PWNAGE and Winnovation was beautiful (unless you were opposing them). PWNAGE’s swerve is gorgeous. We knew that we wouldn’t be able to stop them from scoring. And Winnovation laying down those picks and screens was awesome. To 1732 and 3936, we could not have asked for a better alliance in the elims. We fought through multiple hurdles and were able to make it through to the finals with great teamwork even as each of us experienced problems. It was a lot of fun being able to work with the Hilltoppers again. We wish we could be competing with you all in St. Louis but that’s just not in the cards this year. We’ll all be rooting for you! Good luck and if you need anything Gear it Forward is here to help. We will see you at R2OC and hopefully IRI this summer!
