Sharon Eagle Robotics 2007 Update 11

We will hold our regular meeting tomorrow, Tuesday November 20.  6PM start, 6:30PM robots running.

Blackstone Tournament Report

I don't have all the information from all teams that attended at Blackstone.  This report is necessarily mostly my view.  I hope others will chime in if I missed something of significance.

Blackstone is a big tournament.  They have room for 64 teams, but only had 61 listed, and several of those apparently didn't show.  The bottom line is that we could have sent all of our teams that wanted to go.  I am already planning to do this next year.  The tournament is as good as any state championship that I have attended.  In many aspects, it is better, despite being the biggest tournament of all.

The morning consisted of 5 rounds per team, precisely 30 minutes apart.  Each team is only trying to get a high score; the single high score out of 5 is what is used to seed the 64-team single elimination tournament in the afternoon.

At the end of the morning, the top Sharon team was the Black Botz (Sharon C), with 325 points.  Their other scores were 305, 265, 295, and a 110 "oops" round where nothing worked right.  This score ranked them 5th out of all teams.  The Sharon A team, the Motorizers, had improved their reliable score to 290, and were ranked 12th.  The Sharon B team, the X-Bots, had a high score of 275, and were ranked 17th.  I was quite surprised at the scores these teams posted in the afternoon as well.  A very big jump from the runoff, where straight 260's won it.

Our sister team, the Sharon Devilbots placed 23 in the ranking, with a high score of 240.

In the afternoon, all Sharon teams advanced through the first round.  The Black Botz got a bye, and the other teams faced the weaker teams and got through easily.  Unfortunately, in the top-32 round, the Devilbots faced the team ranked 7th, the "Northboro Team 1" which eventually won the entire tournament (with a score of 350 in the finals).  All of the SYRA teams advanced to the Top-16.  The Black Botz scored 355 points in this round, the highest score of any team all day -- but nobody knew, because they don't record the scores in the elimination rounds!

In the Top 16, Sharon B faced Sharon C (X-Bots vs. Black Botz), and the Black Botz won against a very good X-Bots squad who was without two of their operators and coaches.  I think I heard they scored 330 at some point in the day, but I haven't confirmed that.  Also in the Top 16, the Motorizers won their match.

In the Top 8, the Black Botz faced the "Green Gear Ticks" (Lincoln, MA), the 4th-ranked team, and lost, 295 to 275.  One bad mission was all it took.  The Green Gear Ticks went on to face the Northboro Team 1 in the finals, and lost.  Elsewhere in the top 8, the Motorizers won to get into the Top 4.

But there it ended.  The Motorizers faced the Green Gear Ticks, and were eliminated.

The Motorizers won a "Standing Out" award in the awards ceremony to follow.  The Sharon Devilbots won a programming award.

Everyone had a good time.  Thanks to the coaches and parents for supporting us.  Once again, Sharon teams demonstrated that our program puts highly capable teams into tournaments.

My impression was that NXT robots were much more in evidence than last year.  My additional impression is that this year's scoring makes things very tight around 250-330.  It is very difficult to score consistently higher than that.  I feel that a score of 325 to 360 is probably good enough to win the state tournaments if it can be done reliably.  The Black Botz went into the day "knowing" that 340 was the highest they could do.  But during the day, we discussed and tried some small tweaks to save time, and that time allowed us to get the car/truck mission points.  So we feel that 365 is within our reach.

--Jack Gregory