What can I say, you guys were phenomenal. I’d been with 190 (my other team) all day, and I just about had a heart attack when I found out about this alliance while in line for lunch.
I was team president of 971 in 2006, and watched the team grow from having no corporate sponsors and a non-driving robot to a sustainable team that has built some quality robots in the past few years. Needless to say, I was ecstatic when I heard we had been selected by two of the most dominant and respected teams in FIRST. It was a pleasure to watch the coordination and strategy of that alliance. Thanks for the amazing journey, we can’t thank you enough!
-Evan Morrison
Team 971 Alumnus and Mentor
Team 190 Mentor
I’m sure you’ve seen some of the other threads on the forums where people exclaim as to how you guys were left out to be the last pick, and I am 100% in agreement with that.
Your robot was way to good, but fortunately, or unfortunately, your team was able to push itself far enough under the radar to not get dedicated by any of the other alliances.
Good Job and you guys built one AWESOME robot. I was shaking when I saw that we were against you guys in match 2.
On behalf of team 111, I want say thank you as well. We wouldn’t have done it as well without out help. We were very excited to have you become part of our alliance. Your robot and scoring style mixed in with 67’s and ours perfectly. I couldn’t have been more excited and thrilled to see we had the pleasure to win with your team. I hope to see you guys in the future.
Thank you to 971 for being an awesome alliance partner. Your scoring ability was what made our strategy work. I still cannot believe that we were able to pick you, your strategy meshed perfectly with ours and 67’s. I don’t think we could have done it without you.
Thanks so much for giving us a chance after the way we played on parts of Friday. It was an honor being on an alliance with you guys and 67, two previous champions and Hall of Fame teams.
That strategy you came up with was great! I have no idea what was being talked about for upwards of 40 minutes in your huddles durring the speaches, but it was amazing watching our 3 robots play so well together, particularly with both of your great drivers.
Based on what I could find on Chief Delphi and the blue alliance I made a list of the top 5 robots in Galileo. Oh yes, 971 was on there. I remember looking at the ranking Friday night and seeing 971 0-5, and I was like, “huh, that’s strange”. To our amazement they managed to slip under the radar during alliance selections, and we were ecstatic to have you as our 3rd bot, creating a very scary and offensive based alliance. Each robot on our alliance had great traits that meshed well to form a perfect alliance, I would need to start a new thread to talk about how well we could create strategy with such a flexible, fast, and high capacity alliance.
I have to give props to Wildstang as well. Going into Galileo I figured they were the best robot in the division, and they didn’t let me down. I was excited that we were able to pair up. Wildstang used their crab drive very well, with their capacity of 25+ balls, they were a robot to be scared of. When teams saw that crazy tie dye robot flying towards them they knew they were in for a heap of trouble. Congrats on a second world championship
Wow. That’s one heck of a statement coming from the driver behind probably the most impressive season any team has ever had. We had some tough breaks in our matches, but I don’t think anyone’s complaining about the end result. Also, is it just me, or does 67 have so many wins this season that your TBA bar doesn’t have room for them all?
The following statement may come off as mean, but I know it won’t offend anyone on 971. I believe the reason they weren’t picked earlier in the draft is because they weren’t that good on Friday, they didn’t live up to their potential until Saturday. I know that statement won’t offend them because all reports I’ve gotten from Wildstang members have been that any time they ran into a member of 971 they all got the same question: “why did you pick us?”. I think their entire team was surprised by that pick. I was asked this question and I gave a simple answer: “you pick up well, you drive well, and you score well.”
Before Atlanta, Raul ranked all the robots in Galileo and 971 was pretty high. I don’t remember the specifics of Thursday, but I don’t think we saw your robot on the field until late in the day so we didn’t know if the ranking was accurate. Then on Friday I believe you had communication problems and didn’t move during a match and other matches were unimpressive, so you trickled down our list. Saturday was completely different, you guys rocked. So we bumped you back up near the top of the list. It just goes to show that even if you’re having horrible luck early and aren’t performing well for a few matches, keep working hard and get the robot performing at its top level, it will be noticed.
Like Paul Copioli said in another thread, we do not scout based on rankings or record. No one on our scouting team even looks at the rankings other than to determine where we are and where we may end up after qualifications. We had no idea that your record was 2-5 or that you were ranked 66th. I found that out when I was going over the rankings Saturday evening.
After watching almost every match on Galileo over the three days of competition, I can say that 971 was easily one of the top 10 robots in the division. Anyone who uses 254 as a regular sparring partner must be good. It was a steal to get you with the last pick of the draft.
I felt the desire to post one more thing on this thread. The amazing experience that was Atlanta has continued since we have been home. It has made me feel that although our team has been around for a few years we are still very much rookies. We have been touched by 254’s generosity in the past but the outpouring of support from this community has been tremendous.
We had some things to overcome this year and so for our young team to even go to Atlanta was amazing and to be chosen to be on the winning alliance was more than we could believe possible. But it didn’t stop then. From Paul Copioli making a point to tell our whole team after the finals that we made a difference on our alliance to all the complimentary things said about our team in this forum, the experience has just continued. I happened to run into our school superintendent the other day and he told me that he had been receiving emails of congratulations from people he didn’t know and that he thought one of them was from somewhere in Illinois.
I have always been impressed with the way that FIRST teams help each other but this experience has raised it to a new level in my eyes. I only hope that someday our little team can rise to that level of graciousness.
yeah, Friday for us was aweful. skid control and autonomous werent working, had aweful alliance partners, chain snapped on one occasion, everything was going wrong. we didn’t get things fixed until saturday.
I haven’t been very involved with FIRST this year, so it was only recently that I found out 971 was part of the championship alliance. This is very gratifying but not at all surprising. Team 971 is rock solid in part because of the participation of the Schuh family. Mike Schuh is a NASA Ames engineer. his dad was an engineer and I suspect his three sons will be engineers. I first met this family in 2000, when Mike invited me to his house. His entire family was involved (no not involved) committed to FLL. No TV in the house - just kids doing robots for fun. It was like a real life Dexter’s Lab- except the kids weren’t nerdy.
The Los Altos Community Robotics team has been continuously cleaning up at Botball and FLL events for years. There is just smart and then there is scary smart. These guys go beyond scary smart.
