My vote is for 639, who performed super well in their competitions. It’s sad that they aren’t attending detroit.
I personally believe 3750 should be going to the championship this year. They are one of the better teams we have completed with, and it was an honor going to semi-final at The Great Northern Reginal in Grand forks.
Huge shout out to 271, Mechanical Marauders from Bayshore, New York. Don’t know a more dedicated, humbler, kind, gracious team than them. They’ve always had extremely mechanically robust robots, with their custom shifter gearboxes they make from scratch. I know members who easily machine from 5 pm to 5 am for months and still go to school the next day while keeping up their grades.
Not only that, but this year they started stepping into outreach in addition to their insane schedule. They may not have the most flashy international outreach - but their new step into the world of different FIRST programs has been amazing. On top of their rigorous build schedule they found time to found/mentor some Junior FLL Teams. Walking through the FLL Jr. pits I felt the passion from the kids involved in their programs - they absolutely loved what 271 did for them.
Lastly, without 271’s help and resources, our bot would probably be a heap of metal on the ground covered with my tears. We bagged a bot that could barely score 1-2 cubes in the switch the entire match. After a hard decision to completely redesign in under 30 pounds, we were able to get some pieces Waterjet for us by our sponsor but still had 2x1 extrusion to machine for some axles. Not only did they reply back within 10 minutes of me asking if I could use some of their machines, when I got there, their lead mentor helped clean up some of our CAD, helped make our design more robust, and then taught me how to CNC Mill for about 6 hours, putting aside their own bots pieces to help us get done.
At SBPLI #1, between matches where our team might not have felt the most confident, their scouting lead would stop by our pit to encourage us with his most current data, which gave us a necessary push to keep going, with our spirits high.
Between that and their volunteers at our Week 0 Event during clean up, I could not have met a more wholesome team with wonderful members and mentors.
Even after adding the 3rd regional in last minute (which they had to fundraise for), not qualifying for champs had me upset. Quality team with amazing members. I wish them the absolute best of luck, and it was a pleasure working with them this season.
Off the top of my head from Indiana, I think all of these teams would compete very well at worlds - 829, 1501, 5188, 4272, & 135. Indiana has a lot of talented teams that barely missed the point cutoff.
2702, 5596, and 4069 are all great Ontario scale bots that would have had a good chance to make playoffs at worlds. I feel particularly bad for 2702 - they missed out on worlds due to the tiebreaker.
4525 was a very strong switch only bot that would have been a great addition to any worlds alliance with 2 scale bots.
It’s too bad Ontario can’t send more teams!
Wait how many teams does Indiana get to send?
IIRC, Indiana gets only 9 championship slots, which is a crime.
Correct. A few more got in off the waitlist and 45 qualifies for being a legacy team.
We’ll just have to answer the Andy Baker challenge and get more FRC teams so we get more slots :]
Just a few (of many) for Michigan:
2959, 1701, 4970, 226. These teams JUST missed the cutoff, and they could’ve done well in Detroit.
My top candidate, even though they did qualify it just looks like they won’t be able to attend, is team 95. It has been so incredible to follow their season, their iteration and their progress via their build blog. Certainly a team and bot that I wanted to meet and check out in Detroit.
Also a shout out to 639 who was awesome at CNY and really understood the strategies of power up really early on in the competition season.
Seriously rip 1339, their bot looked awesome and i’m sad I won’t see them again this year. A few good teams from NC that didn’t make it include: 4290, 5544 and 3459.
3360 and 3996 from Quebec
From MN/ND just off the top of my head I’d say 876, 3750, 5638, 2883, 2526, 4818, 3026, 3184, 3102
Is MN the most underrepresented region at champs again?
Also need to mention 233. Don’t think they made it
There are a few teams I’d like to mention:
- 639 built a rather effective robot this year who caught on quickly to make a strong showing at CNY. I’m astonished that the team that was #3 on our picklist at one of hardest events of the season didn’t make it to Detroit.
- 1860 was quietly one of the best robots at TVR. They weren’t flashy but they were consistently a top-notch scale robot, and they were also solid at the switches and exchange when that was their focus.
Something I found interesting…
Only 2 teams that were the first pick of a finalist alliance at a regional didn’t eventually get into champs this year - 3750 at Great Northern and 670 at Utah. Both of those events were week 1.
Thanks for the mention.
This year was an interesting one for me to say the least. At least we had a blast while we were here.
Best team that I saw and played with that did not qualify for Champs in 2018 was 1836.
One of the best switch/exchange bots in the world.
Hopefully they can make it off the wait list for Detroit:)
I 100% Agree, it was a shame that both 1339 and 2996 weren’t able to qualify to Champs. 2996 competed against both 1339 and Us fairly well on the scale and their spirit really brought out the energy in every team. Same goes with 1339, our alliance captain. It was fantastic to play with them in playoffs and we would not have made it as far as we did in Colorado without them.
The tie breaker hurt’s a little more because there is a single ranking point during quals we should have absolutely been awarded.(actually two but the first is sort of on us.) It would have made the difference both in alliance selection and district points.
The ranking point mishap was a bit of a learning experience for us and we will be keeping it in mind for future scoring options that are awarded by referee discretion.
We’re not terribly sad about the whole thing. Last year we won an award and missed DCMP by a few points. This year we won two awards, ranked first at an event, made it to DCMP and missed champs by a single point. We’re on a serious upwards trend after a few difficult years for the team. Next year we’ll probably miss Einstein by a few points. 
I’m very proud of how far we’ve come as a team since the start of last season. And I’m excited to see where we’ll go next year.
Y’all are too kind. We had a great run and a great time. We made new friends with 2848 and 148, got to see our friends from 3005 again, and did the best we could. We are already having a great off season; we just completed the first of three nights recruiting incoming freshmen and have started planning and training for the Texas Robotics Invitational this summer. We hope to see you then!
3940, 5403, 5010, and 4103 also didn’t qualify and could’ve done very well at champs.