The Best Team(s) to Never Win an Official Event

FIRST General Forum
1

So I made this thread, four years ago and clicking through it many of the teams (Including my own choices) have won events since then.

So I figured I would start a new discussion but add some new rules as well as keep the old ones:

  1. You must compete with the team fairly regularly
  2. The team must have competed in 4 straight FRC seasons aka since 2013
  3. Teams must already be signed up to compete in the 2017 season
  4. They can not have won any official event
  5. An official event is one that provides a FIRST Blue Banner (Regional, Distict, District Championship, Division, Subdivision, and Championship)
  6. They can not be your team or teams.

While not a requirement I also would like everyone to list why they think they are good, and what has kept them from getting the coveted winner title.
Bad Luck? Mechanical Inconsistencies? Scouting Issues?

So from Florida I am going to say 3556 GET SMART and 3653 BOTCATS.

3556 was the easy one for me because they are the team that appears to be on their way to being the next big player in Florida FRC. In their 6 years and 8 regionals they have only missed elims once. And those 7 elims appearances include two finalist appearances in 2012 and 2016. 3556 to me is always just one slightly different decision, or one bit of luck going a different way from getting that blue banner and I have faith they are just about to finally have everything come together.

3653 has two finalists appearances (2012 and 2015) over there 6 years, same as 3556, but are not as consistent as GET SMART (Missing 5 elims out of 11 regionals). But after looking at teams who hadn’t won I noticed that 3653 always improves in between their events and does better, hence a late bloomer. 3653 needs to find consistency earlier in the season to get their win, because with their proven ability to improve I know they are capable of producing a robot to win earlier.

Honorable Mentions:
1523
2797
4013

2

I’m so happy that my team no longer qualifies for this. :slight_smile:

3

I’m shocked 4536 hasn’t won an official event yet. They have been one of the top teams at 10k for the last 3 years.

4

This should be a rule for all of these types of threads.

5

5254 Hype somehow hasn’t won an event yet.
They’ve been to IRI twice in their three years of existence without winning an official event.
That shows you how impressive they actually are.

6

TECHNICALLY, 5254 is ineligible by James’ criteria. They were a rookie in 2014, he lists 4 years of FRC experience (‘since 2013’) as a requirement.

And even then, Kevin likes to take out a year to gauge their performance.

Let’s give them a few years :wink:

7

461 still hasn’t won an event.
They’ve been an event finalist 6 times including one division finals appearance. They also have won 5 engineering inspiration awards and two chairmans in their 17 seasons. Hopefully their finals curse ends soon, preferably with 1747 :slight_smile:

8

First team that comes to mind for me is 4536 The Minutebots. They’ve been Finalists at the 10,000 lakes regional 3 years in a row (2014, 2015, 2016) and got the wildcard each time. They recently won their first unofficial event, but they’ve yet to win their first blue banner. 4536 has been unlucky due to the fact that the 10,000 lakes regional is dominated by the usual powerhouses (525, 2052, 2502), but I still find it impressive they make a name for themselves every year against the powerhouses facing them in the finals.

Other notable MN mentions: 2705, 2846, 2987. I’m probably overlooking a couple from MN.

Team 706 also comes to mind. They’ve been competing from 2001 - 2016, and they’ve been Finalists 6 times. It’s been a HUGE mixture of unluckyness. The 1 loss that to stick out to me is when they lost against 3018 and 2052 at Lake Superior in 2014. 706 missed 2 or 3 shots and wasted a lot of time during the match in Finals 2 (they had also won Finals 1) and if they had made any one of those shots, they would have won their first blue banner.

9

I know so many teams that have won once WAYYYY back in time (in or around 2002), but of the teams that haven’t won any, I have to say 1111. They’ve been to the finals three times, won a Chairman’s award, and won three EI awards, but haven’t been able to quite get over that last hurdle.

I expect that to change in the near future.

10

Consider 1885.

They have only missed Championship once since their rookie year in 2006.

They have earned 7 blue banners since 2012, but none of them happen to say “Winner”.

Over 33 lifetime events, they have been eliminated 4 times in the finals, 4 times in the semifinals, and 10 times in the quarterfinals.

Nobody can beat these stats.

11

I’m a big fan of 3250.

1671 is kind of an outlier here, as they’ve won (and earned) a world championship, but they have not won a regional.

3476 was an outlier for a while as well, before the OC regional this year they had two division wins at champs, but no official event wins.

I think both 3250 and 1671 will make it happy pretty soon.

12

I agree 461 has to be hands down the best team to have never won an event.

13

Not completely correct, we won SDR is 2012.

Regional Wins- SD 2012, OCR 2016
Division Wins- Newton 2013, Tesla 2015, and Newton 2016

14

I think it’s shocking how 1741 hasn’t won any regionals/districs… They have been regional finalists three times that I know of (BMR 2006, BMR 2013, Chesapeake 2014), they scarcely miss eliminations (if ever), and they have made division elims. three times (SF 2012, SF 2013, QF 2015).

15

+1 on this.

I’ll add that Steve Florence is among the greatest of FIRST’s unsung heroes. That he does not (yet) have a WFFA is even more incredible than the team’s hard luck breaking through for a Winner’s blue banner.

16

I honestly thought of them and dismissed them immediately for being too good to have not won an event. This actually blows my mind.

17

Extremely biased here, due to my involvement with the team for six years, but I’m convinced it’s 2791. And I’m not technically on the team right now so this post is OK :stuck_out_tongue:

Here’s a complete list of the close calls 2791 has had in their history:

BAE 2012: Second pick of the 7th alliance with 1519 and 885. Knocked out the 2nd and 3rd alliances on the way to the finals, won Finals 1… and died suddenly during Finals 2. Due to some confusion the alliance was not permitted a backup robot and they lost Finals 3 2v1.

CT 2012: Second pick of the #1 seed with 2168 and 118. 2168 was the best team to not win a regional that year, and 118 was an Einstein caliber robot. After cruising through the quarters, 118 encountered the same bug that disabled them on Einstein. Still, the alliance would have won Semifinal 2, except for the fact that after the buzzer, a robot rolled off the opponent’s bridge, and the remaining robot perfectly balanced it. Blown out in Semis 3 and that was that.

WPI 2013: 2791 ended up as the #1 seed of this event, picking the highest scoring robot and only floor loader of the event in team 20. In the quarterfinals, an arm gear broke, removing their ability to hang. After a frantic fix, the robot was still functional for semis and finals, scoring the highest points of the event until Finals 2, when 2168 discovered that if you hit 2791 just right, their arm now had enough slop in it with the repair to jostle their shooter into a jammed state. In Finals 3, a full court feeding strategy was attempted to mitigate this, which almost worked. Any of three separate events would have won the event - 2791’s shooter working as they were hit into the pyramid by 2168 (changes a foul into a tech); 3182 not hanging in the center front of the pyramid on top of a disk (and us remembering the Q&A that clarified this is a legal hang); 20 slidng off the very edge of the pyramid at the zero second mark. This was the most painful close call I’d been a part of.

FLR 2014: Less close than some of those above, but the #4 seed 341 declined the #2 seed to pick us and 4930. In the semi-finals, we ended up losing by a single missed truss shot in match 1. We were more easily beaten in match 2. Not particularly close but a strong performance.

2015 never happened

TVR 2016: 2791 is the first pick of the 3rd alliance, after some issues with the drivetrain and collector. Set some high scores quickly in the quarters, but were bested in the semis by 3 close matches after a substitution on the other alliance.

FLR 2016: 2791 is much improved, doing a solo capture at least once in quals. 2791 is the first overall pick of the event, by 5254. The second pick is a sleeper who was high performing at their last event but struggled early at FLR. After storming through the quarters, a combination of bad autonomous luck and shutdown defense by future Einstein finalist 1405 kept 2791 from even qualifying for Championship.

So depending on how generous you’re being, that’s at least 3 events where a small change in circumstances would result in 2791 having won an event. And with the exception of 2015 (my bad), they have gotten more competitive every year since 2011, always running into a combination of mistakes, circumstances, and bad luck. I think they’re overdue.

18

I don’t feel I can be a good judge of PWN teams yet, but in Texas two teams come to mind.

2881 Lady Cans - 2 Engineering Inspiration awards and 2 Judges awards

3103 Iron Plaid - 4 Engineering Inspiration awards, 2 Finalists, and 1 WFA.

Look out for them when Texas becomes a district.

19

Seeing as nobody has done NE, I would throw in my suggestion for Team 166, Chop Shop. While they have two Chairman’s Award wins in their history, they have never won an official event but have been steadily improving year after year - this year they were Finalists at Pine Tree and Battlecry, as the captains at both events. Not only this, they were also their division’s #1 overall pick at Championship.

20

Team 2090 from Hawaii.
Almost always a Regional Finalist. That team is usually a top 3-5 team selection. Its too bad their school doesnt allow them to do more than 1 regional, and champs if they were to qualify. They started FLL in the State of Hawaii and their program and facilities are top notch!
**Barack Obama’s alma mater and was in Sports Illustrated several years ago as the #1 High School Overall Sports program in the USA.