November 16 & 17 were the last rolls of 2024. Here at BAA Rolls Report HQ we took a little break, but now we are back with your final rolls report of 2024. It was not a sleepy last weekend; we saw the season debut of a storied buggy org and great weather meant teams continued to get many rolls. We also have a season summary to tide you over to the spring, read on!

We are channeling pikabuggy.com this week

• Your Saturday report comes courtesy of James Wong:
  • 5 school busses
  • 4 event trucks
  • 3 times yelling at the same girl crossing the road at the chute
  • 2 charter busses
  • 1 EMS guy on a motorcycle
  • (a bonus surprise car at Scaife, plus many packs of joggers trying to get to a 5K)

And a Robbobuggy (thankfully not in a pear tree!)

• Sunday was a clean day of rolls with a small group to close out the year. No major incidents were reported, and the teams ended up doing roll arounds for the last ~30 min.

We have no pictures from Sunday, so here’s on one from my pre-Thanksgiving vacation

• Final rolls count: the top buggy/driver combos with the most credited rolls are as follows:
  • Elizabeth in Vice – 60
  • Ezrin in Bane – 52
  • Amber in Roadrunner – 43
  • Nanz in Zuke – 42
  • Mei Xi in Invisid – 41
  • Kaylan in Emperor and Lucy in Kingfisher – 31
  • Jazz in Goldfinch and Natalie in Seraph- 28
  • Lily in Lust – 27
  • Cadence in Zuke – 25
  • Lily in Firefly, Sara in Scorch, and Arini in Blackbird – 24
  • Special shoutout to Zuke with the most rolls (across 2 drivers) – 67 times around the curse!
  • Another shoutout to Elizabeth who also has 11 rolls in Lust which seems to indicate she has gone around the course 71 times in 7 weekends.

Zuke missed only one day of rolls the entire semester

• Your season summary: Overall from the reporter’s perspective, it was a very successful semester. Sweepstakes did a fantastic job of organizing rolls, and the weather really cooperated to allow for a lot of practice. We didn’t have a single day that was fully cancelled for weather. Major storylines:
  • SDC debuts a new buggy, and brings very consistent speed all season.
  • CIA comes out everyday with speed and the eye on defending the title.
    • Unfortunately, one of the biggest stories for CIA has to be the crash of last year’s Women’s winning buggy Goldfinch. She hasn’t been seen out since the crash, and we look forward to the return!
  • The third organization we need to note is Spirit, who continue to show up every day and log speedy and consistent rolls.
  • Also significant is the gradual debut of the Greek organizations this year, who historically would dominate the lists of teams entering. No Greek driver/buggy combo has more than 7 rolls, as compared with some of the larger numbers listed above. This year we have had 4 Greek orgs roll, with one additional (AEPi) looking to return soon. Of particular note is PiKA only making their debut on the last weekend. We hope for a very busy Spring for these organizations!
  • Atlas and Robobuggy were out most weekends and accumulated a lot of trips around the course. They joined the rolls order on certain days to help even out the times and get even more practice. When will we finally get the autonomous division? Stay tuned!

Atlas continued to progress this fall

• Final takeaways before we get into the team summaries: after some bumpy years recently, SDC looks to be back at the top of the pack. CIA and Spirit would round out the top three, but noticeably a little off SDC’s pace so far. If you were to ask me to make predictions now, I would give the edge to SDC to top the Men’s and the All-Gender leaderboard. On Women’s, I’d go with CIA based on their recent experience. But we still have another semester to go and a lot could change! You’ll need to be a member of the BAA to get our predictions pre-Raceday! https://cmubuggy.org/membership/

• Apex. Apex rolled on Saturday only this week. All of their drivers are well over the maximum number of rolls that can be carried over from the Fall for qualification in the Spring. They have been very consistent this year, attending every weekend, few if any incidents, and making the rolls reporter’s job easy!

Scorch Hill 5 sprint

• CIA. Equinox was back on the course this weekend for the first time this year. And because roll arounds were declared Sunday, Kaylan logged 9 rolls in Equinox in one day! She already exceeded the total number of rolls that can be carried over, along with all of CIA’s driver/buggy combos that were on the course this year. Saturday, Kingfisher tried out some fairings, but we only saw them for one roll. No incidents to report.

CIA SHOVE

• DG. DG returned to the course with Insite after a few weeks off. Their new driver has accumulated the maximum number of rolls that can be carried over from the fall, while returning driver Ines logged only 3 rolls in Insite (maybe she is waiting for their build?!).

No photo of DG this week, but we eagerly await their new buggy

• Fringe. Fringe brought out Blackbird on Saturday and Blueshift on Sunday. We heard Sunday they weren’t able to work through new driver fitting trouble and recorded no rolls. Fringe has 7 drivers that have accumulated rolls across 5 buggies this fall, all of them have well above the max needed to carry over from the Fall for qualification (the deepest driver bench among all the orgs!).

Blackbird Hill 3-4

• PiKA. The brothers of Pi Kappa Alpha are back! After a semester of challenges related to driver availability, Pike was rolling on Saturday. Raptor made it fully around the course twice, while stopping a few other times as their new driver gained her first rolls. One stop midway into the free roll past Panther Hollow before the monument, and the second time in the chute.

Raptor’s debut

• SDC. Saturday SDC was out with a usually strong contingent. Sunday we again noticed a lack of the follow truck with flags. Minion Vice continued leading the rolls count. We say keep the costume going right through Raceday! 4 of their 5 drivers that have rolled have more than the max number to be carried over for the Fall, and two of their drivers lead all orgs in total rolls.

Rolls 2024: The Rise of Vice

• Spirit. Another clean and quick weekend for Spirit with no incidents noted. All of their 5 drivers have at least 18 rolls logged, remarkably consistent.

Inviscid Hill 2