1796 might just be the best kept secret in FIRST- I knew they were pretty good before this year, but their robot is incredible this year and they’ve just gotten horribly unlucky.
3624 made finals at both TVR and SBPLI and came up just short both times. They have one of the smartest robots of the year- it’s a tiny 24x24 frame with a consistent passive gear mechanism and a hella climber with gear autonomou modes for all three pegs.
It seems to me that people are picking the best ball bots over the best bots at Steamworks overall. I know it’s a popularity contest but it’s still somewhat confusing to me.
I didn’t expect them to rank highly because footage of the Laguna Regional is hard to come by, but they’re looking like the best bot in Mexico at the moment.
I’d like to second Kevin’s endorsement of 3624. They took two most important game objectives, gears and climbing, and built a robot to master both of them. It is a crying shame that, despite making it to both Tech Valley and Long Island finals as the first pick of their alliances, they did not receive an invite to St. Louis. The regional model strikes again.
Oh yeah - I was going to ask about that too. Them and 4967. I think Michigan just doesn’t have enough people voting in this poll, and those outside Michigan haven’t been peeking in to check which teams are looking strong. I guess it can look intimidating with all the events and all the high-numbered teams. It’s hard to stand out when your district has 23 events. Even different regions within Michigan could be relatively ignorant of one another until MSC…
We’ve had good luck in alliances with Michigan teams whose numbers end in 7. Even better with those that end in 67. I mention this for the benefit of teams that might forget their pick list and have to make a fast decision …:rolleyes:
It’s honestly really hard to keep up with district teams nowadays, especially in Michigan. To keep up with California teams this week, for example, you needed to pay attention to essentially just two events. To keep up with NY teams, you needed to look at 3. To keep up with Michigan teams you need to keep up with four events who were largely stocked with teams I don’t know very well.
It doesn’t help further that it’s difficult this year to tell who the best teams to look at at a competition were. The best teams often aren’t winning the event.
There’s a big reason why the second tier of teams at events like SVR, Midwest, and Hartford are on the list for FRC Top 25 (aside from being excellent)- it’s because those are the events people were watching. Not as many people were watching East Kentwood to see a bunch of teams we mostly don’t know and I know people weren’t watching Long Island to see 1796 dominate every match they were in.
At this point, in my FRC Top 25 votes, I don’t vote for 254/971/195 anymore, because I know those teams are already going to get a ton of votes. Instead I vote for the teams that deserve recognition (they probably deserve to be between 10-25) with my top votes because otherwise they’ll get none at all.
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