Posted on | by Sam Swift

Sweepstakes has been on their game since they were elected last spring, the chairmen have met, the drivers have had their meeting, the chores have been assigned, and I am way behind on keeping you up to date.  To make up some time, I’m going to revisit a couple of posts from last fall.  First a summary of who we’ve got on the course this year (compare to the 2009 edition), and then some benchmarks from previous semesters

Orgs in and orgs out

Overall, it looks like raceday 2011 is likely to be down a few teams from 2010, but here’s what we know kicking things off (from bad news to better news)

  • Sigma Nu (2 teams in ’10) – Perhaps the biggest loss to the current roster of buggy teams, but also the least finalized decision.  SN is still on campus and they still have nice shiny buggies and fast wheels waiting in their garage, but they seem to be short on energy and manpower.  Although their impact as a competitor has been slipping the last few years, they were always one of the reliable, year-round, core organizations.  Perhaps last year’s pair of DQs on their only two teams was the straw that broke the camel’s back or maybe they’re just storming out the door so we’ll realize how much we miss them and beg them back.  Do your begging in the official “Hey SigNu” thread in the forum.
  • PhiKap (2 teams in ’10) – It was looking like PhiKap’s presence in buggy might have been on the up-swing as they ramped up to 3 buggies and told us in the fall that their goal was to make top 10.  They came really close with an 11th place finish, but it looks like they won’t have a chance to try again.  Semi-official word around campus is that PhiKap will not be around any longer due to some ill-advised college guy type antics.  Speculation and rumor mongering is mixed in with the SN thread starting here.
  • ZBT-KKG (2 teams in ’10) – The co-ed greek partnership seems to be ending after a year as ZBT is no longer active and KKG isn’t up to going it alone for the time being.  I’m not too clear on what ZBT’s status is on campus.
  • DTD (almost made it to raceday ’10) – Oh man, where is DTD?  You probably last heard mention of the scrappy underdogs after a series of mechanic failures forced them out of the running before raceday.  What was our summary?  “DTD is down but not out.”  DTD, do you know how foolish we could look if you are indeed out?  We’ve got reputations on the line here as buggy analysts!  Think of the alumni!  But seriously folks, we hope they muster the energy soon or in the spring because they were fun to have around.
  • AFROTC (last rolled in 1990?) – This one was exciting for a while, but it seems we’ll have to keep waiting for AFROTC to hit the scenes again.  Over the summer, we heard they were expressing interest and shopping for a starter buggy.  When it came time to actually jump in however, it sounds like the time commitment was too great.  It turns out those are the only kids on campus that already wake up at the crack of dawn the other 5 days a week.  We still hope they’ll make it out someday.  The paint-jobs and naming schemes are too cool to pass up.
  • Beta (2 teams in ’10) – Beta is hopefully just taking their traditional fall semester off during the football season.  They’ve made it to raceday for the last couple of years and showed some real enthusiasm in the early going last year.  I definitely wouldn’t count them out at this point, but they are always a question mark.
  • SDC (just a technicality away from dominance in raceday ’10) – In case you had forgotten, SDC’s march to a dominant repeat victory was cut short last year when they were judged to have run afoul of the fire safety rules.  Those rules call for violations to result in a ban from the following year’s competition as well.  As we saw in Beta’s 2009 case, this rule can be reconsidered on a case by case basis.  SDC has indeed been allowed to participate fully this year.  The tone I’ve noticed surrounding their re-admittance is decidedly less probational than it was with Beta, and more focused on how to make sure nobody gets totally !@#$%ed by a rule they didn’t think they were breaking.
  • KapSig (last rolled in 1998) – Let’s all give a round of applause for our new team of the year.  They didn’t make it out for the first weekend, but they have chores assigned and seem to be in for a full year of learning the ropes.  More detailed info once we get a chance to talk to them.  In the mean time, let us know if you need any pointers.

Rolls Efficiency

For the last couple of years we’ve tried to document how many days of rolls happened and how many times buggies made it around the course on a semester-by-semester basis.  The idea is just to give some longer-term memory to the constant problem of “I think it’s always been this way” when it comes to how and when rolls happen.  The most striking figure is definitely that teams had 40% more rolls by raceday 2010 than they did the previous year.  That’s almost entirely due to the 7 extra days of rolls sweepstakes managed to fit onto the calendar.  If the winter had broken 6 weeks earlier in the spring as Sweepstakes had hoped, the numbers would have been even crazier.

Fall 2009 (with the previous 2 semesters for comparison) looked like this

Stat Fall 08 Spring 09 Fall 09 Spring 10
Days of rolls 6 7 11 9
Scheduled days canceled 4 6 8 10 (Snowmageddon)
Total Rolls 355 490 589 600
Rolls per scheduled hour 30.6 33.4 26.4 32.1
Orgs participating 12 13 13 14
Buggies that rolled 32 37 37 40

More to come … very soon!

Rolls did happen this past weekend, and I know many of you are still waiting patiently for the rolls report. I apologize, but I had to be anal and do these beginning of the year items first. The rolls report will still make it up for sure, and I did post my pictures from Saturday here to keep you busy in the mean time.  We do still plan to keep to a Monday morning publishing schedule for rolls reports, we’re just knocking off the ole rust.