Better to post late than never I suppose. Peak Performance 2019 is just around the corner (this Saturday, 9/14). We have 30 teams and 34 robots competing this year from Washington, Oregon and Idaho! You can find the (inter)stellar team list* at www.thebluealliance.com/event/2019wapp
We’ll be playing Destination: Deep Space (Presented by the Boeing Company) with a couple of special rules updates this year:
The playoffs will be 8 alliances of 4 teams each (CMP Style)
We’re adding a new field personnel role and rule to allow a 3rd hatch panel to be loaded into the loading station during Sandstorm:
New definition:
LOADING STATION ATTENDANT - A designated field volunteer who may start the match holding one (1) HATCH PANEL from their ALLIANCE STATION at the alliance’s request, and will insert it into the LOADING STATION during the SANDSTORM PERIOD if a HATCH PANEL is removed from the LOADING STATION.
New rule:
5.1.1 G: Before the match, each alliance may request up to one LOADING STATION ATTENDANT for each LOADING STATION in the ALLIANCE STATION. The LOADING STATION ATTENDANT will re-load a HATCH PANEL into their designated LOADING STATION during SANDSTORM PERIOD if a HATCH PANEL is removed. At the end of the SANDSTORM PERIOD, all LOADING STATION ATTENDANTS will return any hatch panels they have in their possession to the HATCH PANEL HOLDERS in the ALLIANCE STATION.
Note: It is the alliance’s responsibility to both request a LOADING STATION ATTENDANT and ensure that they load a new hatch panel if desired. Failure of the LOADING STATION ATTENDANT to re-load a hatch panel in a timely fashion during the SANDSTORM PERIOD will not constitute an ARENA FAULT.
The event is hosted by Apex Robotics 5803 and will be held at Seattle Christian School in SeaTac, WA this Saturday Sept 14th! Doors open at 7am, Opening Ceremonies at 8:30am and Playoffs start at 2pm and end with the Awards Ceremony at 5:30pm. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!
Peak Performance policy is to fill spots with as many unique teams as possible. Our 30 team limitation is pit spaces, and the 4 teams bringing 2nd robots will each have a 10x10 shared pit that must fit both of their robots to make this happen. We are always committed to finding ways to allow as many teams and students as possible play.
Does anyone know what event has had the highest percentage of swerve drive robots? This years Peak Performance has to be up there with I believe 7/34 teams running swerve.
Quick update, unfortunately we may not have a webcast stream tomorrow due to some new internet restrictions at the school we couldn’t work around. At the very least we will record and split all matches locally to be uploaded to the FIRSTWA YouTube channel either in real-time or as soon as possible.
Apologies for any inconvenience. We’ll still give it a go tomorrow but as of tonight it seems unlikely.
Where do you post frequently about dates and sign ups for these competitions? The past two years, my team had hoped to play because it allowed a bit of drive practice and rookie integration, but I could never find it early enough: All spots were taken by the time I heard about it…
We really wanted to ry to attend also but were told all spots were filled even though 4 teams have two robots entered. For us, being in Oregon we dont always get all the information that Washington teams get. Would like to see more equitable communication given to all teams in pnw district, not Washington first and oh by the way I guess we also have Oregon.
The extra robots dont actually take up extra space, and my understanding is that the most limiting factor to adding for more teams is pit space, rather then space in the schedule.
That being said, given that peak preformace is one of the most competitive off-season events in the world (4th I believe by ELO) I would be interested to see peak performance migrate to a selective event. Given that space won’t be increasing any time soon (unless they move to a bigger school/space) i’d really like to see just how competitive we can make it.
I’m not sure who all ended up on the wait list, but I’m certain that 6443 would have been deserving of a spot. Moving to a more competitive event would not only show off just how great PNW is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up with teams coming in from arround the country.
If anyone has a list of teams that were on the wait list, we could theoretically determine what the average ELO would have been if we admitted only top teams. Let’s see if we can top Chezy Champs
All that being said, competitive events are inherently exclusive, and given the lack of off-season events in PNW, I can see it hurting many teams who might not otherwise be invited.
I got my info through a volunteer email, and it seems an email from FIRSTWA went out back in May about all the offseasons this year. Im not sure how to join the latter emailing list, but the info is being shared.
Typically the FIRSTWA FRC Email Blasts only go out to the (two?) Head Coaches that are registered with FIRST.
I would imagine FIRSTWA is not picking and choosing who to send off-season info to. Quite honestly that is more work than anyone wants to do when there are a million more pressing things.
I suggest making sure the registered adults have the correct emails listed on the FIRST registration site and that the emails from FIRSTWA are not going to Spam.
This isn’t the first time we hear about a pnw activity (not just peak performance or competitive event) from another team suggesting we attend that we have received no information about. Our head coach is trying to make sure we are on the right lists. This also wouldn’t be the first time that someone has multiple group emails and selects the incorrect one. Like MikLast, we received second hand info that the email about peak only went to previous participants and volunteers.
Not saying variances in communication are intentional, but I believe they do exist. I remember one team that had Facebook, email and text groups for communicating team activities and all three were different. Just an example.
Oh, please do not make this selective and only for PNW. Our team 3145 being from Northern Idaho, we were the only one there outside of the PNW. We hope to be PNW one day and are trying to make that happen. Coming to this event last year gave us the inspiration to do swerve this year on our robot. I hope we were counted among those 7, even though I think when I looked around the pits at swerves, it was probably higher.
I know that the coordinator there works hard on this and making this selective would just make it more harder and might exclude us since we are not in the PNW officially. As to how we know to register, we just make sure to get in as soon as we can since it is 1 of the only 2 Off-Seasons we can drive out to.
Our team did well this year at the event ranking 9 and even being the captain on the No. 7 Alliance. I always thought that it was one of the most competitive Off-Seasons. Knowing now that it is 4th highest, I will let the kids on the team know. They will all take great pride in that and with what they accomplished.
We can only do one regional a year since that is all we can afford. This off-season event and limited travel involved is alot more affordably than the “in-state” regional. It is agreed we get more out of this event than the regional.
It was a great event, and seeing a Jack-In-Bot vs. a Jack-In-Bot final was definitely interesting.
A shout out to the event coordinator and to 5803 for putting on the event. They are always the most gracious hosts and make everything work just great. All the teams there are so helpful and nice to us. They go out of their way to make us Northern Idahoans welcomed.
Evan here (Peak Performance Event Director), want to jump in and clear up a few things.
I’ll be the first to admit that the communication this year regarding Peak Performance was lacking. This was due to a number of factors, including me moving over the summer and a new coach transitioning in on Apex. It’s not an excuse, and we will strive to do better in the future, but I can absolutely say that this year the communication was not up to our standards and I definitely appreciate the patience and gracious professionalism everyone exhibited as we worked to pull things together this year.
Info on the event was sent out in multiple FIRSTWA email blasts to coaches (as mentioned previously) and anyone who had emailed peakperformance@apexfrc.com asking to be included on future communications. I normally get something posted to CD as well, but that didn’t happen this year.
There is a clear demand for more off-season events in the PNW. This year, we filled to capacity (30 unique teams) within 24 hours of the registration form opening, which is WAY faster than we’ve ever filled. Our waitlist was >10 teams. As long as Peak Performance is held at Seattle Christian School, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to increase team capacity, as we’re limited by pit space. As is, we already shrink team pits to fit as many teams as we do. If anyone is interested in running an off-season event and wants more info on what it takes, feel free to reach out to me!
The idea of an invitational has been brought up to me a few times, but until there are enough more off-season event options in PNW, that’s a non-starter for me. We’ll keep being a first-come-first-served event.
As noted above, our mission is always to accept as many unique teams as possible. We allowed teams to bring 2nd robots this year because it didn’t increase the number of pits needed, and in doing so we were able to have more than 32 robots and therefore run 4 team alliances, which I believe was a positive change.
This year’s event was an absolutely blast, and once we actually kicked things off on Saturday it was smoothest running Peak Performance we’ve had yet. I can’t thank the teams and volunteers enough for continuing to support our small event!
Four off-season events really isn’t enough for the rapidly increasing amount of teams in the PNW. Despite the large presence of PNW teams at chezy champs, i think everybody in the Pacific Northwest agrees that more off-season events is a good idea. I hope to see some new off-season events in the coming seasons.
Also, peak this year was by far the best off-season event I’ve attended. The entire event from start to finish was absolutely fantastic! I hope to attend again next time.
Theyre probably waiting for someone to submit them to TBA. If FIRSTWA already has them in a playlist, its as easy as labeling each match through TBA’s importer/labeler thing.
Thanks. I knew the list was on First Washington in YouTube since it was announced at Peak. Just hoping to have the matches linked to the videos on TBA for easier navigation.
