CHS Platter - Week 1 - Full Size Cheese

FIRST General Forum
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Welcome back, CHS enthusiasts! The CHS Platter crew is glad to be back to bring you our classic gouda takes and grate insights.

As CHS returns to normal after single day events in 2022, this is the first time a majority of students will compete in full-sized district qualifying events. They’ll have more breathing room between matches, but more total matches and double the teams to scout.

After Rapid React was majorly dominated by swerve drive, many teams have upgraded to swerve for Charged Up and are putting swerve into production for competition for the first time. Will the growing pains of swerve complexity and the in-event maintenance they require bite any teams this season?

Heading into the 2023 season, here are the top teams in the district:

Preseason Top 20 CHSyness

Rank Team Number Team Name City State CHSyness
1 836 The RoboBees Hollywood Maryland 45.31
2 2363 Triple Helix Robotics Newport News Virginia 44.55
3 1629 Garrett Coalition (GaCo) Accident Maryland 30.22
4 5804 TORCH Richmond Virginia 27.23
5 4472 SuperNOVA Woodbridge Virginia 26.92
6 1111 Power Hawks Robotics Edgewater Maryland 25.80
7 384 SPARKY 384 Henrico Virginia 24.31
8 449 The Blair Robot Project Silver Spring Maryland 23.08
9 620 Warbots 620 Vienna Virginia 22.94
10 401 Copperhead Robotics Blacksburg Virginia 21.64
11 1610 :ferry: Blackwater Robotics :ferry: Franklin Virginia 21.47
12 623 Oakton Cougar Robotics Vienna Virginia 21.47
13 5724 Spartan Robotics Salem Virginia 20.97
14 1731 Fresta Valley Robotics Club Warrenton Virginia 20.94
15 7429 Convergence Midlothian Virginia 18.18
16 2199 Robo-Lions Sykesville Maryland 17.20
17 4099 The Falcons Poolesville Maryland 17.10
18 1885 Comet Robotics Haymarket Virginia 16.97
19 122 NASA Knights Hampton Virginia 16.41
20 614 Night Hawks Alexandria Virginia 15.69

What exactly is CHSyness? We’re glad you asked! We take real district event results (no Championship data, sorry 4099) and merge it with some magic formulas, throw in a little Elo, then mess with it until we like the results. The way we do the calculation is subject to change week to week. Super straightforward? Yeah, we thought so. Just trust us. As we move through the season, the 2023 events will be weighted higher than 2022 events.

For what its worth, the Blue CHSiest team in the district is ranked 27th in CHSyness. You know we couldn’t leave ourselves out.

Blacksburg

Number of Registered Teams: 38
TBA page: CHS District Blacksburg VA Event (2023) - The Blue Alliance
Livestream: Twitch
CHSyness: 8.91
Number of Swerves: 18+

Predicted Winning Alliance: 2363 - 1629 - 3939

The Favorites:

2363 (44.55) - After last season’s performance winning every official event they attended, amassing 4 blue banners in a single season, it’s hard to overlook Triple Helix. The amount of drive practice they’ve had with their swerve will be sure to help them to the top of the rankings.

1629 (30.22) - A perpetual contender in CHS events, the newest Hall of Fame team’s 2023 robot features exceptionally clean wiring and a smooth swerve drive. What does Garrett Coalition have on top of their swerve? We’ll find out together.

401 (21.64) - This is the most prepared we’ve ever seen Copperhead Robotics for an early season event. Pink arm? Maroon and orange arm? Who cares? This thing is smooth! With a cone, cube, and balance auto mode they’ll look to take the lead in autonomous mode and never look back.

Others to watch for:

422 (12.33) - Mech Tech’s first swerve robot has a fast belt elevator, an Everybot inspired intake, and a variety of auto modes that should take them deep into the playoffs.

971 1731 (20.94) - Swerve drive (are you sensing the trend yet?) and a carbon fiber double-jointed arm that certainly looks Spartan. Hopefully Fresta Valley has the controls to match.

8592 (3.34) - In only their second full season, Newton Squared is rocking one of the shortest bots of the year on top of a swerve drive, and can score at all levels.

Rookie Spotlight:

There are five rookie teams registered for this event. We’re excited to see what they’ve built. Good luck rookies!

  • 9003 TuTu Turtles
  • 9033 Ocebots
  • 9179 Ballou Robotic Knights
  • 9214 Roadstead Montessori High School
  • 9235 ThunderBolts

Hot takes from reveal videos and other inside info:
This data was gathered from social media, ChiefDelphi, and other publicly-available means including Week 0 events. These are in numerical order.

1262 (13.14) - The STAGs are bringing another swerve robot to Blacksburg, dressed up in their usual green and yellow. They’ll run a simple, yet very effective, arm with a claw.

3136 (13.09) - ORCA is sporting an angled elevator on a tank drive. Check out their Open Alliance build blog.

3373 - The RoboHawks have a tilted elevator with a claw on… you guessed it - a swerve! But 3373 has had a swerve for many more years than most other teams in CHS, which is demonstrated by how stable their robot is when the elevator is fully extended.

5724 - The Blue Ridge Brawl hosts are rocking a slow and steady thrifty extension arm with a roller claw on top of a fairly quick swerve. Their open frame may make Spartan Robotics a dark horse since it can easily sneak into opponent loading zones for a quick game piece steal.

Didn’t see your team mentioned? Want to make sure you’re mentioned in a future post? Send us a DM here on Chief Delphi with information about your robot.

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Is CHS top of the FRC controls meta right now? I think so. Let’s see those autonomous routines!

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This changes everything!

Triple Helix would like to thank our amazing alliance partners 401, 1915, and 3373 for their excellent work and perseverance during our challenging run through the double eliminations bracket in Blacksburg, culminating in a victory.

Good work and stellar performance by the #5 alliance, who we battled twice, and the #2 alliance, who we met in the finals. Really loved playing with you.

Much thanks to 401 for hosting the tournament-- it takes an incredible amount of effort to host an event like this while also competing in it. Great job to all involved.

Thanks also to the Platter for believing in us! See everyone in Portsmouth.

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Congratulations 2363, 401, 1915, and 3373 on the win! Very well deserved.

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Congrats to you all on the win, hopefully we learned a lot from the event. We’ll see next week in Bethesda. The only thing we’re sure of right now is that we’ll get the auto mobility score for sure.

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Nice to see the platter back in full action! Fun event to watch on the live stream.

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Thanks to all the volunteers and competitors who made the trip to Southwest Virginia for this event and made the 2023 Blacksburg event such a success. To overextend one of Woodie’s aphorisms, if the robot is a campfire for a team then local competitions are bonfires at which we all can meet, compete, and collaborate. Competition lets us show sponsors, parents, school administrators, and other stakeholders the culmination of all the work of so many teams helps them start to get what FIRST really is. That bonfire had been missing in our area for four years but through the hard work and help of all of you it now shines brighter than before.

There are too many people who helped with this event to thank everyone but I’d like to especially shout out our FTA David, Head Ref Jen, LRI Justin, lead queuer Erin, the impressively experienced ref crew (70+ years of FRC experience??), and the small army of robot inspectors who got all the teams inspected with lots of time to spare.

Thanks of course to all of our excellent alliance partners- 2363 Triple Helix, 1915 Firebird, and 3373 Team Robohawk for all of their work and perseverance through the playoffs. The lower bracket path was stressful at times but it sure was exciting!

Our perpetual pit neighbors 422: Mech Tech Dragons once again helped us get through an event with spare tools that we somehow forgot even as the host, extensive support with scouting and data analysis, and helping our Dean’s List nominee practice before her interview.

Congrats to 9003: Tutu Turtles, 9033: Ocebots, and 9235: ThunderBolts for their Highest Rookie Seed, Rookie Inspiration, and Rookie All Star wins respectively, it was great to see more new FRC teams and we look forward to competing with you at future comps and in future years.

I’d like to close with a bit of a departure from the typical “super sappy pchild post event post” and instead pose a question and point of concern to the CHS community; what can we do to better ensure that all teams make it to competition? We lost four teams - two of them brand new rookies - who were supposed to be at the Blacksburg event. What do we need to change or improve to help make sure every team who registers is able to actually compete?

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BC loves going to Blacksburg. The event is always top notch and the hosts aren’t too bad either :wink: if only we could get a decent cell signal in the gym…

The real question is this: were those teams ever planning on coming? If they were slotted into Blacksburg as their second event, they may have never wanted to go there in the first place.
Also… week 1?

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Thank you from 9003. It was a fun weekend with a lot of learning for the team and drivers. So much hospitality and offers to help. The inspectors were top notch. The space is nice. A special thank you to 401 for their warm welcome and continued support. Congratulations to everyone who competed at every level. See everyone at Deep Run!!

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Had a great time at Blacksburg, wish our electricity behaved itself better, but you live and you learn.

Gotta give a massive shout-out to our adopted CSA, Levi, who spent about as much time in our pit as any of our team members trying to chase the gremlins out of our wires. In addition to Levi we’re all greatly appreciative of the volunteers that helped this event run.

I’m also greatly appreciative of all the teams that helped us out. Our playoff partners 3939 and 5724 put incredible effort once again trying to fix the afforementioned electrical issues. Was always nice playing next to 401 with everything Preston saying going both ways.

Interestingly enough this event we weren’t meant to be pit neighbors as 404 got their old number back, but before we even showed up 401 had traded pits to continue our long standing tradition of neighboring. But after this weekend I wish we were the ones that switched so we could have both as neighbors. The entire weekend the ARGS team was fantastic to work with and I’m glad to have y’all returning to the low number side.

Look forward to seeing a lot of you guys in a couple weeks at Deep Run, and to those doing different events hopefully we can meet again at CHCMP

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