Alamo Regional

So, we recently competed in the Alamo Regional! Here is how things went down :
In FIRST, every round consists of a 3v3 match up, with teams randomly selected. The winning team gets a certain number of ranking points, and the losing team gets none. Which means that no matter how good your robot is, you would still get 0 ranking points if your teammates sucked.Our ranking score was very low because our teammates were mostly rookies or subpar robots, despite our team having a good robot.

When elimination rounds start, the teams with the most ranking points become team captains, and choose teams to make their alliance of 3. So for a robot like us, we wouldn’t be captains, but we would be chosen because we were one of the best robots there.

HOWEVER, on the last day, we found out to our dismay that the processor in our cRIO(The brain of our robot), was faulty and had loose bits. So during the final rounds before elims, our robot couldn’t move. So all the teams in the stands looking for robots to choose, saw us as a robot that couldn’t move. So no one picked us. Also, we got a new cRIO right before elims started, so we work working elims started.

Our robot can consistently score about 30 points by itself. 95% of the elimination rounds had total scores of each team below 30. We could have easily turned all of those matches around, and placed really highly in the tournament, possibly qualifying for internationals in St. Louis.
This was really a depressing moment. Easily the best robot this club has made, the best drive team we have ever had, and yet, probably the worst performance at a regional. Due to a lack of funding, this was the only regional we competed in, and thus ended our season.