The alliance of 254, 111 and 973 was unbelievably strong with a perfect mix of tube scoring, minibot speed and defensive play.
Personally, I can’t think of a team who is more overdue for a Championship victory than team 254. The Poofs are an inspiration to just about every team in FIRST. Their designs are broken down, analyzed and duplicated year after year, yet they continuously outdo the competition. A special congrats to my friends on 254.
WildStang is a household name for every team in FRC. 111 fought through a tough season and came out on top of every one. Their consistency year after year is truly jaw dropping. Congrats to 111!
To team 973, I will be honest in saying I did not know much about your team before this season, but I assure you, FIRST knows who you are now. An extremely impressive 2nd round pick which I’m sure left many teams wondering why they had passed over you earlier in the alliance selections. Congrats to you on a job well done.
Logomotion was a very exciting competition and the battles in the division finals and on Einstein showed just that.
Congrats to the new World Champions- 254, 111 and 973!
Congratulations to Adam and 973 along with an overdue championship title for the Poofs. As Brandon said, 111 and 254 are always the teams we strive to emulate. What many don’t know is that 973 should also be a team to emulate. The caliber of 973/1323’s robots this year was incredible and both Adam and RC are constantly stepping up their game.
973 is the team I want to be. Not because they won a well deserved World Championship, but because they have worked very $@#$@#$@#$@# hard over the past 4 years to make their team the very best it can be, even though they didn’t start out with much. That kind of discipline and hard work is something I wish we could do.
Wildstang is something else. They now have a record as dominant as HOT. They’re one win away from Beatty. Incredible. I’m so glad The Cheesy Poofs finally won a Championship, too. They’ve raised the bar for quality in FIRST every single year.
254 - Long overdue for a World Championship. What most people don’t realize is the “senior” mentors on 254 are not long time NASA engineers. Corey, Travis and EJ are all FIRST Alumni.
I believe EJ was a student team member as far back as 2002 when the Poof’s workshop was a storage room in the basement of a NASA computer center building. They shared storage space next to the original ‘disk drive.’ I mean a 3 foot diameter iron disk powered by a washing machine motor! Corey was a student from Woodside (Team 100). The original mentors on 254 - Jason Morrella, Steve Steve Kyramarios, Bob Homes have all moved on to other things.
The Poof’s have always set the bar very high, but also have followed the philosophy of lifting everyone up to their level, not beating other teams down. When the Poof’s won the Chairman’s Award, I told Mark Leon, “Aren’t you proud your team won?” He said, “They are all my teams.”
I’m not going to argue who I think should be the world champs, because 254 obviously deserved it, with their reputation and awesome robot this year… but I can’t help be feel a little bad for 781 and their field problems, does anyone know what ultimately led to that? All of their other matches went so well.
254- I finally got a chance to talk to a few of you this year. Your robots are always works of art, and this one was no exception. It was also nice to see a few of you behind stage, I just wish you would’ve joined our conversations!
111- It was nice talking to you guys for a while. You once again had an awesome machine that did not disappoint! This one reminded me of your 2004 bot for some reason. I hope to get to talk to and get to know you more as the years go on!
973- To tell you the truth, I have never heard of you before this competition, but after what everyone here is saying I will be sure to keep an eye out for you.
At this point we aren’t certain of the problem, but we suspect it was the digital sidecar. After the first failure, the drive team tethered it to the driver’s station and all was working fine. This wasn’t the case when running wireless. It’s too bad we weren’t able to defend against the powerful alliance of 254, 111, and 973.
Problems aside, we were ecstatic to make it as far as we did. We never expected to make it to Einstein. For that we extend our thanks to 2016 and 177 for making our first championship since 2003 amazing.
I am very happy for 111, 254 and 973. 3 role model FRC teams that deserved that win (especially 254).
Also don’t forget getting to Einstein is no easy task and getting to the finals!? wow. But I think there are 3 other teams that deserve some recognition, 2016, 177 and 781. All 3 are great FRC teams, props to 2016 for getting to Einstein for there 1st time (this was well earned). 177 seems to be a household team on Einstein now (after 5 back to back years of being on Einstein). And to team 781, there 1st year to go to champs AND be a finalist on Einstein is spectacular.
We also noticed after that or robot “died” when our arm reached 90. We will continue to trouble shoot though.
I would also like to congratulate 973, 254, and 111 on being world champs and say thankyou as well as sorry to 2016 and 177 we really had a great time playing with you guys.
We were neighbors with 973 in the pits, and they are really nice people. Their robot is extremely polished and well put together, and I hope lots of people saw how great their driving is. I’m glad we had a chance to play against them.
Right before alliance selections, I was talking with them, and they were saying that they’d basically be a liability to most teams as a first pick given their lack of a working autonomous mode. The combination of 254’s double uber and other teams’ lack of one helped to align the stars to create basically the perfect alliance. I’d be curious to know if they just slipped under the radar or if the team captains were consciously valuing the third uber tube over the super minibot + super driving.
Even if you could pick any three robots from any divisions, it would be tough to beat this alliance. I think it would be fun to see the champs play against 148 and 1114 with 469 on defense.
781 - At GTR, we were having problems with our banebots motors. When we hit a certain angle with the arm, the whole robot would time out. This is so, because dust and little particles get inside the casing of the motors. After a certain amount of this build-up, the gears hit a certain point and the robot times out. What we did to fix this is connect the battery ends to the casing of the non-working motor and this effectively fries the buildup of particles. I know it is to late now, but you guys should definitely try this for future reference. (This only applies if you are using banebots)
254, 111 and 973 - it was amazing playing against you guys. Between the extremely fast minibots, consistent triple uber-tubes, and 4-5 logos every match, you guys won a well-deserved championship.
we will have to check that out as we are using the bb rs775s. Since this is the fourth competition using the same motor there could quite possibly be build-up.
Way to go 254, 111 and 973! What an awesome alliance. Special congratulations to the Poofs for finally getting a Championships banner to add to their ridiculously long run of regional and division banners high upon their shop wall. Kudos to 111 for another great Championships effort too. And 973…all of us out West have known of your special team and great robots. Maybe teams back East will start to realize there really are a lot of top quality teams on this side of the Mississippi now.
254, 111 and 973 were a great alliance and well deserving of the championship.
In week 2 I was on Mike and Justin’s broadcast chat and had called 254 to be better than 1114 in my rankings and I got a lot of strange looks and questions. But these guys had a strong robot from day 1, and it only improved event in event out… Once I saw them paired with 111 I knew this was going to be a difficult feat, also 973 added to that mix, they played shutdown defense on whoever they targeted, great drivetrain and drivers to go along with 254 and 111.
I would also like to thank 177 and 781 for joining our alliance and helping us win the division, there were a lot of tough matches and to get through all of them the way this alliance did was just amazing.
To 781 - I am so glad we were able to get you guys in the 2nd go around, we thought you would be gone for sure. Things happen thats how robots work. But we got to Einstein in many ways because of your capabilities, so no worries about not working, we hope your drivers are not too disappointed not being able to play the 2 matches.
Thanks to everyone for a great championship and an amazing first year in St. Louis.
I want to say thank you to everyone who had given us congratulations on here and at St. Louis. It was amazing to see another World Championship in such a short time. I really want to give my thanks and additional congratulation to 254 and 973. I was very excited to have finally had the chance to team with the Poofs and to help assist them to their first and hopefully not their last World Championship. Also if Mark Leon sees this post, we did our math and we double checked our work Also I would love to extend a special congratulation to 973. I was very impressed with your overall robot, especially your minibot. You’re the perfect addition to this amazing alliance. Without your minibot, I doubt we would have won that match against 175, 40, and 399 where we won by 1 point. I really am proud to have had the opportunity to meet a few of you. You may not have been a well known team in FIRST, but that has all changed now. I look forward to seeing both 254 and 973 on Einstein again in the future.
Team 254, our brother team. I can honestly say I’m not surprised. For years, you’ve inspired other teams, helped other teams, and brought a multitude of teams to success (Including us in 2003)! This championship win of yours is long overdue, and will start a chain reaction of future championship wins. Team 256 can’t wait to alliance with you again. Team 256 proudly supports team 254! Love you Poofs!
We are extremely thankful for being asked to join this alliance. It appeared to be a match made in heaven where auto mode, scoring and minibot needs were all covered. We faced some really great teams on our way to Einstein and then our greatest challenges came with the teams from other divisions. It is hard to play against so many teams that we call friends. I think virtually all that we faced fit into that category. Good luck to all in the future.
We likewise feel bad for 781. The field staff reported that perhaps the Classmate dreaded “slow mode” cut in during the first match as everything else appeared normal. During the second match, something failed in a more spectacular fashion. Even the RSL was non-functional when checked at the end of the match. The team suspects as I do, that something in the DSC failed. Often, power supply is the cause, either through metallic debris or loose connections to PD.
