Hey guys! As many of you may know, Hawaii’s first tournament, the McKinley VEXhibiton, took place on August 19 and 20. It was an exciting, well-run, and on-time event with a nail-biting finals match that came down to one point! Congratulations to all participants, but especially to:
394: Programming Skills Champions (9)
359: Driver Skills Champions (22), Finalists
2438: Tournament Champions
3008: Tournament Champions
2504: Tournament Champions
4109: Excellence Award, Finalists
3685: Finalists
368: Event Coordinators (Hooray!)
Because of the reduction in the number of available worlds-qualifying spots for Hawaii teams, the tournament champions and skills winners did not qualify for Anaheim (that honor was reserved only for the very deserving Excellence Award Winners). However, tournament champions won an extra slot at the Pan-Pacific competition.
Additional factual notes:
1) We had one double-disqualification in qualifications when a team accidentally tipped and landed on their opponents’ gate. The other alliance, trying to be courteous and not damage the first team’s robot, left the gate down past the 30 second mark. Disqualifying both was the correct call, but I sort of wish that the game didn’t penalize teams for refusing to risk damage to fallen opponents.
2) Double-disqualification included, there were a grand total of five matches that ended in ties. One of the ties was between the robots that were at the time seeded second and third. A win would have made either one first seed, but because they tied, they wound up second and fourth!
3) The highest match score was 28, put together by teams 2438 and 394 in a qualification match. The highest-scoring match overall was Finals Match 1, in which 4109 and 359 prevailed over 2438 and 3008 by a score of 26 to 21. Only one doubler was in play!
4) Generally, scores were higher in Eliminations, but they were somewhat deflated by use of the negation barrel.
5) The lowest winning match score in Eliminations was Finals Match 2, in which 4109 legally descored a doubler to drop the winning score from 20 to 14.
6) In the year where VEX finally allowed us to plug in your batteries during a match if you forget to do it earlier, we had the first tournament I’ve ever been to where no one forgot to plug in their batteries. Go figure.
Strategies and tips that I personally noticed:
1) Be careful about introducing the doubler and negation barrels early! Even if you pull it back, it’s still a disqualification. Finals Match 2 was 14-10 in favor of Blue before Red was disqualified for early negator introduction. It didn’t affect the outcome, but imagine if it had been Blue that had put the negation barrel in at the 40 second mark!
2) Don’t underestimate the power of the floor goal. Several of the ties were generated by loose balls rolling around on the mat and going into the floor goals on accident!
3) In matches where everyone’s on their A game, there are only three contested bonuses on the field. I’ve posted about this before, but the 20" goals in isolation and the central 30" goal are really important. When both Interaction robots deadlocked in front of the 30" goal, Finals Match 3 became a race to see whose robot would finish and leave Isolation first.
4) In Qualifications, Match Loads sometimes lasted for the whole match. By Eliminations, they were usually all in play and scored within the first minute. It helped that, later in Eliminations, alliances sometimes took all four preloads.
5) Autonomous is like a head-start on the match, even without the bonus. The most successful teams all approached target goals in autonomous, though they didn’t necessarily score.
Once again, thanks to everyone for a great tournament! Check out our robot in the reveal thread soon to be posted by my fellow team member. Hawaii teams, see you at the next regional! (Footnote: Threads like this should probably go in the Gateway forum, but no one has posted there in weeks, so I decided to put this in General.)
Speaking of that…
Getting on the board is better than not being on it at all.