This is a discussion thread for teams in the 2023 Magnolia Regional.
Looking forward to seeing everyone there! I’ll be the guy in the suit trying to get used to emceeing double elimination events 
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I am so happy to finally attend a home state event. We are thrilled to be a part of the inaugural Magnolia Regional. I’m stoked that 118 and another MS native @Natchez are joining in to kickoff official FRC in MS. There are a lot of good things happening in LA/MS FRC and I am so grateful we get to celebrate it close to home!
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Looking forward to seeing you there!
I heard that 118 wanted to bring Viper Rover to play at Magnolia, but it was sent to the Moon for a bucket of ice, and hasn’t made it back yet.
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Had been wondering if you would be MC’ing Magnolia as well! Hyped! Looking forward to it!
Thrilled to be seeing everyone and their bots! So excited to have a new event in the area!
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VIPER’s swerve drive…which is about 40 times slower than an SDS L1 might struggle to make effective full field cycles…Echo on the other hand is ready to help kickoff the inaugural FRC event in Mississippi! The Robonauts are super excited to be attending the Magnolia Regional, especially after how great of a time we had at Magnolia’s sister event, The Bayou Regional last season.
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I think there must be a more recent Echo at NASA than the one from my early childhood, commemorated by the 4 cent postage stamp below.
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So happy to see that an FRC event has started up in MS! Wish I could be there to see everyone - good luck to all teams (especially the team in orange 
)! It looks like it will be an exciting one!
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Great event so far! In addition to being the first time I can hug two of my three children at the same time since new years, the venue (Magnolia Center, which is home to the southern Mississippi state fair, and way more rustic than Barton Coliseum in Little Rock was) has been very attentive to our needs, and fed the volunteers well with filling regional comfort food (meals today included scrambled eggs, sausage, grits, biscuits, fruit, gumbo, grilled chicken, green salad, pulled pork sandwiches, beans, and potato salad). They’ve put down mats and put up temporary covers so that volunteers can make the walk from the field to the volunteer lounge without walking through the mud which tomorrow’s 100% likely rain will bring. (OBTW this walk still involves a transit of the stables, which are empty apart from some not-so-fresh hay. The volunteer lounge is a 100+ year old barn with padeyes at two elevations on every column both along the border and on the interior to tie livestock. The game venue has signs letting people know that they shouldn’t tie stock to the electrical conduit.) . While I grew up with horses and occasionally cattle, goats, chickens, and ducks, and did more than a few horse shows (I was a bit of a commodity on the buddy pickup until I hit a growth spurt), It’s still interesting to be playing robots on a carpet placed on top of masonite placed on top of a plastic floor rolled out by a tractor placed on top of… dirt. The signs in the Men’s room asking that you not spit tobacco into the urinals was also rather interesting. Honestly, the two biggest things missing from my tweens and early teens are hearing Morse code transmitted at high speed (like, 40wpm, so not surprising) and the smell of burning resin flux. I know that crimps are better for most FRC connections, but I miss that homey resin smell. The third is that there aren’t any actual horses or chickens or goats or ducks or egg snakes around so far as I can tell.
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As fans of the show Home Town on HGTV, we are so jealous of anyone attending this regional. @Molly_Connolly
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Excited to meet you tomorrow (today? Just passed midnight)! Just made the drive fown from Nashville, and I’ll be the Game Announcer this weekend!
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This thread doesn’t look too active, but I just wanted to congratulate 3039 Wildcats, 4336 Ramageddon, 5045 Spartabot, and 3753 BulahBots! on their win at the Magnolia Regional. I’m always impressed with 3039’s and 4336’s robots, especially, and respect the heck out of the teams and their mentors. And another congrats goes to 3753 for the EI award!
On behalf of 1912 Combustion, I’d like to thank 3959 Mech Tech for inviting 364 Fusion and 1912 to their alliance and giving us the privilege of helping bring the 8th seed to the finals with some exciting upsets along the way.
1912 is looking forward to seeing many of our Laurel friends soon at Bayou.
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That was a great event! Awesome group of teams, great volunteer staff, big venue (and volunteer barn)! The playoffs were especially exciting, seeing 1v8 in fInals. I had a great time announcing and would love to be back next year!
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A great event, and I totally agree with Clark @Rowley! 4336 and 3039 were both awesome at Arkansas, and both stepped up their game at Magnolia.
That said, if 2992 can fix the CANivore issues which disabled their drive train in the next ten days or so, I consider them a favorite for Bayou. Completely separating the intake and placement manipulators definitely is working for them. They also did a great job of keeping their CoG low for the dashes across the field. I think their concept of separating the intake and placement functions is inspired, and not just because I know so many of their mentors and several of their current and former students. (Mandeville HS is 30 minutes away from my house, and at least one 2992 mentor was formerly a 3946 mentor.)
Also, a very Gracious Professional event! Among a host of other great stories, 7474 JXN United, a community team from Jackson MS, loaded in Wednesday evening, then showed up with one student and one mentor on Thursday, and no robot. With the help of a great number of teams, most notably 118 and 3468, and CSAs and RIs, they managed to build a robot from scratch (by lunchtime, the two sides of their mecanum drivetrain built on a nanotube chassis were still separate pieces) and hit the carpet every match. The first two matches, 3468 had to drive for them, as their driver’s release paperwork hadn’t been signed. I congratulated 3468 on winning match 4 TWICE, as both 3468 and 7474 were on the winning blue alliance. (OK, Disclosure. I was already ready to do everything I could to support 7474 as they loaded in and heard their story. They wound up in a pit adjacent to 3468, which my eldest, @ExploitSage, is mentoring, so I followed their story with interest throughout the event, and made several suggestion, a few of which they adopted. (I provided suggestions to many teams. including the top performers, the middle performers, and the lower performers. Only one team at this event that I worked with wasn’t receptive to suggestions, so I stopped. )
I’ll post some cell pics sometime in the next few days.
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Congratulations to 3039, 4336, 5045, and 3753 . We enjoyed sharing the field with you guys and it was a great series of matches at the end.
Thanks to our friends at 3959 for asking us to join your alliance despite our robot being in a constant state of disarray all through quals. It was a hell of a run. Somehow us joking around from Thursday morning that we were going to alliance up again actually became a reality. We loved hanging out with you guys again all event, and getting to play together on the same alliance again.
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Honestly at this point we have to pick eachother. Great competing with you guys again!!!
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It was great having you guys!