It didn’t.
So here’s the story, as best told by having a full night of sleep.
Thursday afternoon, I fly from Indiana to Columbia. I get off the jetway, go to the bathroom, and am washing my hands when I get a Slack message from Jeff at AndyMark: “Are there any teams in Spartanburg?”
Turns out that our AndyMark truck, with the SCRIW field onboard, lost its driveshaft in Spartanburg about 90 minutes from Columbia. (You can see the burnt grass around mile marker 37 on I-26.) This was Thursday afternoon just after 5:00, so no trucks could be rented that night. I’m just thankful it happened there and not going through the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina; the latter could have easily been fatal.
I woke up at 6:00 the next morning to drive to Spartanburg and help Jeff cross-load the truck. Except it took until 3:00 PM and the fifth truck leasing company we contacted to find a suitable truck over in Greenville (about 45 minutes away) and get it. But we got it (thank you to our accounting director Ben for getting our account and insurance set up with these guys quickly), then back to Spartanburg, then an hour or so for us to get the trucks lined up (including a very game truck mechanic jacking up the stricken truck to help) and cross-load everything.
The field arrived in Columbia around 7:00 PM; we were supposed to start assembly at 10:00 AM. Our crew, including Jeff and our FTA Juan Chong, stayed deep into the night assembling the field. I tapped out around 1:30 to go make signage; Juan reportedly left around 3:00 AM.
6:15 AM alarm, I get to the school, and by the time I can get the pit signs laid out and reach the gym I already see a gaggle of people in team shirts helping us finish assembly. We didn’t put a call out, people just started. It was an incredible and humbling sight to see, and I can’t express enough gratitude to the teams that helped us.
All those delays pushed back radio checks, when we discovered the school network was shutting us down for a second year. We had assurances from the school this would be fixed this year, and IT staff were onsite to scramble for the fix. (So help me, this will not repeat next year if I have to bring hedge clippers to cut wires.) Fortunately, we had a driver’s meeting to run and only lost about 20 net minutes to this…just 20 minutes we couldn’t afford!
It was a long and challenging day, but with the help of too many people to list we still managed to get in six matches per team and our planned 4-alliance playoff that was absolutely thrilling. The mentor match wrapped around 7:30, which for the number of things that went awry is nothing short of miraculous.
SO WITH THAT SAID:
Congratulations to 2059, 4451, 3737, and 283 on winning SCRIW VII! It was a stunning set of finals matches, where they bested finalists 6366, 3489, 9999 (3489’s B-team), and 1758. With the win, 2059 becomes the only three-time SCRIW champions; 4451 also picks up their second title.
Thank you to Juan Chong, the undisputed iron man of the event as our FTA. I know he didn’t expect all of this and more when he offered to FTA SCRIW at the North Carolina State Championship, but he took it all in stride all the way through the final buzzer and tear-down. I don’t know if I’d have held up the same way.
Thank you to Jeff Taylor and all of my coworkers at AndyMark, who never said die and dropped whatever they were doing in Kokomo to make sure this event happened. (And also helped me with some trophy part fabrication, which kinda gets lost in all of this other insanity but was still super helpful.)
Thank you to Terrell Burch, to the Drake sisters, to Sue Wayman, to Marcus Osborn, to Dorothea Schadel, to all the 1293 and 2815 kids, to everyone who was looking forward to my workshop (something had to give, and you can’t run a lunch workshop if you don’t take a lunch break–look for details soon), to the mentor match teams who raised over $250 for the FIRST in Texas Harvey Fund, and to everyone who made this event come together in the face of absolutely everything coming unglued.
This one was one for the record books, and we hope we’ll make SCRIW VIII even better.
