Confusion over 2002 Worlds divisions

In 2002, team 308 was on the alliance that won the Einstein division, but the alliance didn’t end up winning worlds. However, in the Blue Alliance it says that 308 won the Galileo division and is finalist at Einstein field. I understand that “Einstein” normally refers to the championship field, but that’s clearly not the case for 2002 if my team has an Einstein banner. There’s not a lot of information on the 2002 season, so I can’t tell for sure if this is a problem with TBA or not. Was there both an Einstein field and an Einstein division?

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According to my records, the four divisions at the 2002 Championship were Archimedes, Curie, Einstein, and Newton. If I recall correctly, in that era Einstein was a division, but also the field that the finals were played on. There was also a year (not sure if it was 2001 or 2002) where all the divisions rotated to play some matches on Einstein to ensure that all teams got to play on the big stage with the most bleachers.

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Thank you so much!

More than just those years, I seem to recall that being the case back in 2000.

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Yup, in 2000 teams played on multiple fields, but there we no actual divisions. Teams had a lot of fun back then trying to make a picklist from all ~250 teams in one division. :upside_down_face:

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Wait, so there was one alliance selection and one playoff bracket? That is, only 24 of 250 teams made it to the playoffs?

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Now a piece of the puzzle on your love for baseball stats falls into place, that sounds wild XD

Watching that all had to be rough, especially without FIRST published stats.

(Not sure how big of a stat head you are in reality Karthik, but I know you appreciate some good strategy)

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That sounds very similar to how MSC evolved over the years. Only no Octafinals :wink: . EDIT: Nope, looks like they had 16 divisions. Nice! (Yikes!)

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That year had 16 alliances of 3. So 48/250

image

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Just a reminder a mere 12 teams made Einstein in 2012/2013

4 divisions of 100 each, backup bots were not a thing in the same way they are now (that was a 2014 change).

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Shortest 2000 champs picklist:
image

There must’ve been an hour between A1’s first and second picks

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Only half an hour.

Serpentine wasn’t a thing yet, and wouldn’t be until 2006.

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The more I learn about early FIRST, the more I understand what you meant when you said:

“Things were very weird back then. The rules were very very different. A lot of you weren’t alive then, and it’s probably good, because things were scary.”

and

“It was the wild west back in 2002.”

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