Trenton Regional, Saturday

Hi everyone!

So, everyone who was at the Trenton Regional seemed to have lots of fun. It was great to see LogoMotion in action, plus Bart Kamen (Dean's brother) was there talking about their late father Jack Kamen.

So onto details about today.

1) One team in particular really shined today. Team 2016 was doing wonderful today. In the third match of today (I didn't catch the match number), they were a main contributer to 3 logos that the alliance made, plus they were the first minibot up the tower. Then, in match 75, they hung 3 tubes and were the first minibot again. In match 81, first minibot again, but this time they hung 6 tubes (including oober). Their minibot took approximately 3 seconds to get up the tower. That match had a score of 79-23, with 2016 being on the winning alliance. They are not going to be at Chesapeake or Philly. As of right now, they are not registered for Nationals either. But I would be on the lookout...

2) 303 had a telescope similar to ours, however it was slower than ours and once their trolley started to go up, it looked very twitchy. During one match they also didn't seem to have much of a plan. Team 25 had a very fast telescope that was tall. When they would go to hang on the top rack, their mast was about half a foot above the middle peg and the trolley could easily go up with no problem.

3) We need to be careful about red cards and yellow cards. During the quarter finals, the 2nd seeded alliance got a red card for entering the blue alliance zone and pushed into a robot that was hanging. Because of that, they were disqualified. If they hadn't gotten the red card, they would have won that match. During the same match, the 7th alliance got a yellow card for deploying their minibot outside the tower zone. Alliance 3 got two yellow cards during one match for a) deplying their minibot before the 15 seconds and b) placing an oober tube during teleop. Drive team and back up drive team: make sure you know all the penalties and how to get a red and yellow card so we can avoid making those mistakes.

4) As Christian said yesterday, most alliances were only placing a few tubes, and not many had minibots. The most logos I saw today for an alliance was 4, and I saw that twice. I saw a total of 3 minibots go up about 5 or 6 times. So while the majority of the teams weren't scoring a whole lot, there were some matches that were definitely one sided. That being said, today the National High Score was beaten and then tied today. During the first quarter final match for alliances 3 & 8, the 3rd alliance got 124 points while the 8th alliance got only 22. And then in the first smi final between 1 and 5, the 1st alliance got 124 points while the 5th got 36.

5) During the 2nd match for quarter finals for the 5th alliance, team 816 lost their minibot on the field at one point and it started running around the field. While it was amusing to watch, teams losing minibots during teleop was a common thing. They would also lose them when they were trying to deploy them on the pole. We need to make sure we don't lost our minibot when we are competing.

For those who weren't there, here is a list of the 8 alliances:
1) 1676, 2016, 303
2) 423, 486, 293
3) 1923, 25, 1860
4) 1228, 2590, 75
5) 2180, 816, 1302
6) 1089, 1647, 102
7) 2729, 1218, 192
8) 2191, 181, 2199

Alliances 1 and 7 made it to the Finals. Alliance 1 won. Of those two alliances, 1218 is going to Chesapeake, 2729 is going to Philly, and 303 is going to Nationals. I would not be surprised if 1676 and 2016 make an appearance at Nationals as well though.

Hope everyone had a wonderful day, whether it was spent in Trenton or elsewhere. Only 12 more days until our own regional begins!
-Sam