Hey all, member of 3965’s drive team and senior here. So this year we participated at the Las Vegas regional and turned out to be one of craziest roller coaster of emotions I have ever experienced
We arrived on Thursday with much needed modifications to our robot from our last regional and got to work. As the day progressed, problem after problem led to us having to abandon our ability to place cubes on the scale for a much more consistent intake. It was unfortunate but we figured we could pull through and be an excellent exchange/switch bot.
So Friday roles around and we do not get the great start to our regional performance that we were hoping for. We started off at 0-6 with zero ranking points pitting us in dead last at 44. Not getting into specifics of why, it was a very demoralizing start to my possible last regional. As the day continued we started gathering ranking points here and there pitting us at what I believe to be about 40.
Saturday was where we began to show our potential and competence as a competitive robot and things went much smoother. When alliance selection came around we were sitting at a much nicer 28 seed.
Let me preface the next part by going back to the Vegas Regional 2 years ago. That year we won along with team 842 and 987 and received our first regional win in our teams relatively short lifespan.
So back to the present, teams began selecting and team 842 declined their invitation to the 1st seeded team in favor of picking up 987. The selections continued into the third robots and we had still not been picked. So along comes the 2nd seeded alliance, 842 and 987, and the announcer asks who they will pick for their final partner. They answer by saying they would like to win another regional with team 3965 and our team completely looses it.
So we continue into the next matches and play our hearts out all the way to the finals, filling up the vault and controlling our switch and even double climbing several times with 987. Then it happened and we won our second regional with the same alliance as two years earlier.
So there is our story of how we came from last to winning a regional. I would like to say it was a blast playing against all the teams post selection and a huge thank you to the highrollers and the falcons for making dreams come true twice. Good luck to all teams and i can’t wait to see everyone in Houston!
Jared,
It was obviously a pleasure to battle for a repeat regional win with you guys (and thank you 842 for bringing us all back together of course). Your recap holds a valuable message about the importance of scouting all the way through Saturday morning. Never write off a team just because of a poor start and focus on the potential and improvements they might be making. A team’s ranking position just doesn’t matter…
I can’t agree with that more! Saturday morning is often the most important to scout. That is when all the teams are performing how they would in elims.
Scouting is KEY! The movie Money Ball taught us that!
It was a pleasure forming the alliance again and winning again! Storybook endings don’t often happen in life. This was one of them! Thanks 987 and 3965!
Any chance somebody out there recorded match videos at LVR, at least Saturday elims? Blue Alliance videos are few and far between for this past weekend’s events:(
Congratulations on your win!!! It was an amazing few matches against you guys! Great robots! It also reminds me of the chat room conspiracy theorists in the twitch stream when 971, 972, & 973 won together! ::rtm:: 
Sounds like a wild ride indeed! Good luck at any future competitions this season!
What an experience! It was awesome playing against you in the finals; congratulations to your whole alliance for a much deserved regional win!