2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Let's see how quickly this thread gets buried!

Who's planning on going?

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

174 signed up at the last minute. It will be great going back to Buckeye, the site of our first regional win (2006) and seeing the many great teams headed there that we will play with/against at FLR.

Looks to be a solid event this year.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

68 plans on going, but I think were on the wait list. I want to go but I will be out of town on the day of the regional.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

According from the frc website it looks like you guys are in. I have attached the updated list of teams.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Team 1014 will be attending Buckeye this year. (This is our first time ever to attend two regional competitions, and Buckeye will be the second.)

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

340 will be there again. We are looking forward to playing with some of the teams we met last year and playing with a good number of teams that are traditionally at FLR. Should be a fun weekend!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Team 1629 will be attending the Buckeye Regional again. We look forward to competing with everyone in attendance!!!! This Regional usually provides some pretty awesome matches. See everyone there!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Team 2512 from Duluth, MN is coming to Buckeye this year. We are looking forward to meeting and playing a lot of the great teams from "out east."

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Thanks Steve!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I was talking to an individual who attended the Buckeye Regional a couple years ago. This person told me the location of the regional is in an unsafe part of town. I was wondering if anyone who has been there in the last couple of years could comment on the venue and safety of the event. We want to be prepared prior to arriving in Cleveland. Thanks Folks.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Myself and the rest of 340 are looking forward to being back in the Buckeye State for the second year in a row! It was a ton of fun last year, and look forward to the great competition again!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

There is a private parking lot directly across the street from the venue. It is not controlled by Cleveland State University police. A Team 48 mentor's van was stolen from this lot in 2002. A few years later, in the same lot, someone broke into a Team 48 alumnus' car and stole a bunch of stuff.

Moral of story - park in a gated CSU lot. Have fun!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

1551 had a blast last year despite persistent shooter gremlins, and will be back this year.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I went to CWRU for grad school in the early 90s, and my wife went to Cleveland State. We both have family in the area, so we get there a lot. And This will be the 7th trip 1014 has made to the Buckeye Regional. I have attended 4 others. The area around CSU is a lot nicer now than it was 10-15 years ago. Probably safer too.

I heartily agree with Travis' recommendation to park in one of the CSU lots. There is actually a CSU parking garage across the street. We are staying in the Hilton Garden Hotel again, which is a couple of blocks away. We take a school bus up from Dublin, which drops us off and comes back on Saturday. So we walk everywhere. We have not had any problems with crime in the area outside the venue. (I actually had my car broken into once on my trip to the regional, but it was broken into out in the suburb of Walton Hills. Just goes to show you that you need to be careful everywhere I guess.) It is a city however, so you have to take reasonable precautions. We make sure the kids know that they don't go anyplace outside the venue alone.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

It isn't in the fancy tourist-facing side of Cleveland where the American Iron Chef plops a restaurant down, but at least we're not Detroit! (Famous video reference there)

In all seriousness, parking in the CSU lots is your best bet. You have practically no security with any of the generic $5/day lots. Other than that, it's your standard mid-sized city. There's bound to be looting and robberies. Just don't leave valuables out in the seats and you'll be fine.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Team 2834 will be coming for the first time. We are from the Metro Detroit area. I hope it is okay.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Thanks for the information everyone. I believe we will see you all in Cleveland.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Team 781—The Kinetic Knights—will be making our return from 2 years ago to the marvellous city of Cleveland, Ohio! Can't wait to see the teams we missed last year!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Gettin' pumped for Fingerlakes 2.0!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

201's signed up. Which teams should we look out for? All these names are foreign to me.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Is this your guys' first time coming to Buckeye? We've been a team since 2010 coming back every year- and it looks like there's a lot of new (and returning) faces this year!

3266 checking in.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Forgive me if I don't mention some names, but here's what I would notice on FIRST glance.

1126—SparX—is a year in and year out excellent team that did a great job at Finger Lakes this year with 48 and another team, even making the finals.

340—Greater Rochestor Robotics (GRR)—is one of the defending winners of the Buckeye regional and have a great bot; look out for them. They're also a model FRC team with 7 chairman's wins at Finger Lakes, including a 5 straight streak broken this year by 2809, K-Botics.

2016—Mighty Monkey Wrenches—are also a brilliant team with 2 regional chairman's wins and good success at world's, including a world finalist in 2011 and Newton finalists in 2008.

Kind of brief, but I figured you just wanted to know some name and numbers to watch for at the regional. I'm sure you'll get to know more about them at the regional; they light up the competition.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

All of them.

And no seriously, all of the teams descending upon Buckeye are top notch, reaching elimination matches in their previous events. This year, Buckeye is not just a random set of teams but a high-performance event and I bet that you'll find a lot of surprise winners.


On another note, 174 knows what was wrong with our drive train back from at FLR (we think) and will be fixing it most of thursday. We will make a much better showing at Buckeye so everyone better throw out your old scouting data on us. :D

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Couldn't agree more- the first time we saw the roster for Buckeye we knew it was going to be the toughest event we're attending. 68, 174, 706, and of course 1/3 of FLR's winning alliance, 3003. Definitely going to be an awesome event.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

It is great what some teams can do between regionals. Paul Copioli—or Mike and Justin, I couldn't tell who was speaking at the time—was mentioning in a match how 772's shooter has gotten a lot better from one regional to the next.

Our robot also improved a lot from our... interesting performance at Toronto East to Waterloo, where we got our 3 disc autonomous working in one match and a couple discs in most other matches later on. An example of how our shooter got a lot better was in a match with 1114 where we were completely ignored by a defensive bot in favour of going after Simbotics, which gave us open ground and we winded up getting a good number of frisbees ourselves.

It's great to see what the teams' pit crews can do in such a minimal amount of time.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

1629 GaCo would like to wish everyone safe travels in this snowy weather. The robots are about to decend upon Cleveland!!!! Watch out, here we come!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Team 3260 from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania will be attending. It should be interesting as this our first FRC regional outside of the Pittsburgh regional.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

3591 will be there

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Here's the current weather forecast. Make sure you dress appropriately, especially if you plan on walking to Quicken Loans Arena for the social. Being by the lake can make it feel colder than what it is when they wind is blowing.



For all of your food and entertainment needs, check out Positively Cleveland, our official tourism organization.
http://www.positivelycleveland.com/

Thanks for choosing the Buckeye Regional, and welcome to Northeast Ohio! :)

Week 5 online broadcasts?
 

Haven't seen an update to the NASA page with week 5.
http://robotics.arc.nasa.gov/events/...s.php#webcasts

Does anyone have a link to the live feed for Buckeye? I hope there is one...

Thanks.

Re: Week 5 online broadcasts?
 

Yep. Here you go.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/2013-b...gional-webcast

Looking forward to the great competition this weekend!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Sadly 306 will not be attending Buckeye this year, first time in 4 years. The band had a trip planned for this weekend and over half of our very small team is in the band, so we went to Queen city instead. A group of us are how ever coming down Friday to support all of the teams, If any team finds out Thursday they need anything, let us know and we will bring anything down from our shop. Best of luck to all teams! See you all Friday!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

This will be our first year providing webcast for a regional- so if anyone has any feedback during/after the fact (preferably during, would like to get everything adjusted ASAP!), shoot me a PM or post here. Much appreciated. :)

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I was wondering if we could get some archived video from the practice matches uploaded?

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Looking forward to a great competition. Just a heads up that the qualification schedule it out for the Buckeye Regional. Good luck teams!

http://www2.usfirst.org/2013comp/eve...eduleQual.html

Matt

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Overall, it's been working well. A couple of audio glitches.

Any chance of getting the commercials out of sync with the actual matches? :rolleyes:

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Congratulations to Buckeye Regional tournament champions 639, 2834, and 2252. You put on a great show!

Now that it's over, I'm curious to know how the Buckeye compares to the other regionals you have attended this year. Areas for discussion: what did everyone think of the Cavaliers basketball game as the team social? What about loading and unloading your robot, parking, robot inspection, overall pit environment, and the practice facilities? Anything else?

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Honestly. The regional was not that great.

If you would like more feedback, I'll happily give it to you in a PM.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

This is our first time attending the Buckeye Regional. I think it is well run. Loading and unloading was easy. Parking was plentiful closeby, and not expensive. Robot inspectors were very experienced and quick. Pit was spacious. It was nice to have the option to attend the basketball game but we did not take advantage of it because our team usually like to have a nice team dinner together.

However practice facilities is lacking with 53 teams. We have to wait for a very long time to get to use the field. Also had a bad experience with an Ohio team with one parent saving 5 rows (over 60 seats) by herself when our team was all there. She would not let us take any of the seats and her team finally showed up 10 minutes later. Not knowing what the social norm is in Ohio, we did not make a big fuss about it. Another complaint I have is the concession stand. I have no problem with not allowing outside food and expensive food. It is like that in a lot of places. My biggest problem is they are only open for a very short time during the peak lunch hour. I guess it is not worth their time to staff the concession stand when there may not be a lot of customers. So if I miss the lunch hour because we have to work on the robot, then we are out of luck.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Security didn't let in any food, but during lunch the food stands ran out of food almost immediately today. The practice field was off by about 5 inches I think. The pyramid on the field was separated at the connection above the first rung before one of our matches, and I saw the pyramids lifting up throughout the day. When having the teams cheer for their state you forgot ours. Also the comment by the announcer about us being in unwelcomed territory was unnecessary.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Anyone know if there will be any archived footage of the matches?

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Of course, I have to stick in a random observation, knowing the state tree/acorn/etc ...


Why is the Buckeye Regional not held in Columbus?



That is all. Please return to your regularly scheduled discussion.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I was glad I could stop over to watch the last day of competition for this regional. It seemed extremely well run. Big congrats to team 639, Code Red Robotics and their alliance partners! My girlfriend and I chose to sit with your team and we were rooting for you the entire time.

2013 Buckeye Regional Thank You
 

Thank you to Team 639 for your last second decision to pick us. I hope we did not disappoint you. Not too many second round picks score around 60 points a match in the elimination rounds.

Somebody on your scouting team was paying attention on Saturday. I know many teams make a preliminary list of top teams to pick from Friday night and then adjust those teams up and down based on Saturday morning matches. We had a number of issues with our robot all day Friday including breaking and twisting our shooter frame after hitting the pyramiad because it was not lowered enough. We ended up 3-4 and ranked about 40 something at that point. Our OPR at that point was around 7. I would not have picked a team like that myself.

We fixed all the issues Friday evening after our last match before the pit closed. When I looked at our remaining matches on Saturday, none of them would be close based on the OPR predictions. We were going to win the first one and lose the last two. But our drive team refused to give up. They were on fire, winning all three matches and ended up ranking 13 with OPR of around 25. They were scoring around 50 to 60 points per match on Saturday.

Team 2252, you guys were awesome. Your robot is a scoring machine. Without your 5 disc autonomous, we probably would not have made it through semifinal. We coordinated our offense very well without getting in each other's way.

Team 639, you did a great job in pre-match strategy, and coordinating in detail where every robot goes in auto, teleop and end game. Your scouting team did a great job, picking two good scoring robots to complement yours. I still cannot believe we scored 150 points together in the last match, considering our highest match score in our two previous events were 89.

We will be attending Michigan State Championship and then go to St. Louis. See you guys there.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

The connection at the venue was choppy at best, so we're working on uploading the archived matches to YouTube now. A couple may of been missed due to glitches in the software we used, but the majority of them will be up tonight @ http://www.youtube.com/frc3266 Also, we know there's an audio issue. We have no idea why it came through like that. Sorry.

Since the regional is over now I guess it'd be alright to say our scouts had 2834 at the top of their picklist. :) You guys were amazing, and I'm surprised that you guys didn't get picked sooner.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Awesome, thank you!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I'd like to extend a big congratulations to our friends on 2016 for another Chairman's banner. Great work guys, see you soon!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

First, congratulations to team 2016 on their chairman's award. I was glad to see it go to such a deserving team. Congratulations to to 1629 on their engineering inspiration award, another great selection and a very deserving team. Congratulations to the winning alliance. We hope to see all of you at Championships.

Unfortunately, we will not be attending Buckeye again until the event is officiated by a different head referee. This is not because of the obvious liberties taken with the rules (which so many teams complained about), but because I have never seen an FIRST volunteer behave so inappropriately in their interaction with students. He ignored the drive team member standing in the question box for at minimum a single match. He would not allow them to show him the rule in question. He was standing uncomfortably close to our driver, speaking loudly, with an angry tone (I won't say yelling). When another student team member tried to diffuse the situation politely he was told to, "Step back". I observed the interaction and I'm proud of the way that my students handled themselves. They were polite, professional, and did not escalate the situation. The bottom line is that I will not allow my students to be treated in this manner.

The volunteer staff was very polite and professional, but I would have liked to have seen them better informed. All throughout Thursday, our Chairman's presenters were told that they were "accepting no Chairman's awards until Saturday." The sign-up sheet was eventually placed out near the end of the day Thursday, however. Then, when it was nearing time to present, the volunteers had no idea where the presentation room was. Our presenters were also told by multiple volunteers that presentations were not until Saturday. We did, eventually, get to the correct place. That aside, the volunteers were great.

All of that said. The other teams at the competition were great. We'd love to play with you in the future, but it will not be in Cleveland.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

When will you be posting the elim matches

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

They're all being uploaded in order (currently on Qual #44), they should all be up before tomorrow. I'm going as fast as I can, promise! :p

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional Thank You
 

Thanks! I'm really glad we got it working for eliminations. You guys were great partners! I'm so glad that we got you guys on our alliance we couldn't have won without you.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Thanks to 639 for believing in us! We had a great alliance and we worked well together. You guys really showed us how to have fun during tough elimination matches.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

We had someone else complain about that and as far as I know, we had someone go up there and take care of it. Teams should make sure that the parents know the rules about seating (first come first serve).

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Thank you very much to team 3266 for uploading all of the videos. I know what a huge task that is. Congrats to 639, 2834 and 2252 on your victory. The 132-117 loss to you in the quarterfinals will go down as one of the most intense matches we have played. Thanks for 4269 for picking us. Our growing collaboration with you at competition and back in Columbus has been rewarding, and I hope we get a chance to play with you at CAMM this June. Thank you 3266 for being excellent alliance partners. And congratulations to 1629 for their Engineering Inspiration award and 2016 for a well deserved Chairman's Award.

Finally we would like to congratulate our friends from 4611 for their Rookie All Star award and for their consistently improving robot over the course of the competition. I am confident they are on the right track in FRC.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

We had a similar situation with our team captain while she was trying to get clarification on a ruling. The referee really needs to consider what the purpose of FIRST is all about and practice "Gracious Professionalism" when dealing with students. These are great teaching moments and as mentors we should take advantage of it.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

While I am in no way affiliated with the Buckeye Regional, if you had issues such as what I am reading here with a volunteer, I highly suggest you contact the volunteer coordinator for the event. Contact information for Buckeye is on http://www.oai.org/firstbuckeye/volunteers.html

Conduct such as what I've seen described is no way for any volunteer to act, especially in a key position.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

We have been attending Buckeye since we started the team four years ago, and consider it our “home regional”.

With that in mind Team 3266 will not be coming back to Cleveland next year, or any year after that. This has been the worst regional event we have ever attended.

And before you write this post off as just an upset kid complaining about a bad call or something there are actual legitimate reasons for our decision.

First off as was already mentioned the concessions were awful. If the venue won’t allow any outside food then they should actually be prepared and have enough food for 53 teams worth of people. Yesterday my team went to buy food (that’s extremely overpriced) not 15 minutes into the lunch break, and they were out of everything but popcorn! And we didn’t have time to walk somewhere to eat so we had to skip lunch.

Volunteers are great. It’s very kind of people to donate their time to help others and try and help run an event as big as an FRC regional. That being said there was several issues that my team, and other teams had with a few volunteers. I will not mention the teams that shared their problems with me or will I mention any names. One example was while in queue for a qualification match on Friday there was a queue’r who didn’t like how I was pushing the cart I guess and he grabbed the cart (with our robot on it!) from my hands and forcefully rolled it to where he wanted it. He made no attempt in communicating with me where he wanted the cart to be positioned, the big problem I had with this is was that volunteer had never worked with our robot or cart before, he had no knowledge of how our robot was made to sit on our cart, or how easily it would have been for the robot to fall off with a sudden jerk of the cart. Our cart is about four feet tall and our robot would have had some serious damage if it would have fallen.

The head referee was beyond unprofessional and not at all in the spirit of gracious professionalism. Not because he made bad calls, that wasn’t really an issue or something fair to complain about, but because he was rude, arrogant and mean-spirited. There is a reason the question box exists. It is there for when a student has question about a call, or rule, or the game play in general. There were three or four times this guy caused problems for us. One of the many examples was after our last quarter-finals match, one of our scouts (you know her as the girl who accepted our alliance invitation in German) went to the question box to ask the ref about a situation in the match. She was more than polite to him when asking her question and he immediately went off on her and questioned her if she even knew the rules and how the game was played. He continued to raise his voice in attempt to humiliate her, and when she got tired of it and started to walk away he called her back saying “Get back here, I’m not done with you” he demanded to know her team number and when she said 3266 he replied “the judges will here about this one”. Now who agrees that the head ref was WAY out of line? He went out of his way in attempt to humiliate her and punish our team for having a simple question. She was very upset and it took a while to calm her down. This was her first event as a member of our team, everything there was new to her and I felt very bad for her that she had to deal with this man, who was down right just a bully.

There were many confrontations with the head ref, not only from our team, but at least to my knowledge, several others as well.

We feel as a team that the $4,000 we spent to compete at Buckeye was a complete waste, and could have been spent elsewhere that would have been more beneficial to the team.

However we did enjoy competing with all the teams there, I had a good time socializing and made some new friends. Thanks to 4269 and 1014 for being amazing alliance partners! And congratulations to 639, 2252 and 2834 for the regional win!

Feel free to PM me if you would like more details.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I'm sorry to hear that. That is not the true norm here. I believe I know which team you are referring to, mostly because the same woman may have tried with us on Friday. Ironically, it was in the same spot 2252 has been sitting since our founding in 2007. I hope you didn't receive must hassle after that.

Also, I would like to extend my thanks out to teams 639 and 2834. We really couldn't have done it with out you guys!
639, Code Red Robotics, truly is a fun-loving team. It was a blast dancing, cheering, singing (amazingly on 'Living On A Prayer' I might add), and meeting all of you while we were in queuing. Not to mention we are ecstatic that you picked us!
2834, Bionic Barons, you guys were extremely reliable on and off the field. And for that we thank you. Sharing the feeding station was no problem and it was a beautiful sight.

Hoping to see you all in STL!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Despite the unqualified head referee, we had an absolute blast at Buckeye. I went into the regional uncertain of the outcome, due to the numerous robot problems we experienced at our previous week 1 regional. Thankfully, the mechanical and programming solutions we implemented after our first regional were successful and our robot performed to expectations.

I never could have believed we'd end up ranked 2nd or that we'd bring home a blue banner. To 2834, 2252: in hindsight, we could not have picked better alliance members. The scores we racked up in eliminations were well beyond my hopes and most importantly, I had one of the most exciting and fun times of my life working with your drive team members. Thank you so much to all of you.

Oh, and 2252: that was an absolutely SICK autonomous you guys had there.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

First id like to say congratulations to 2016 for your Chairman's win and to 639, 2252, and 2834 on the regional win. I'd also like to thank and say sorry to 2016, and 3496 you were great alliance partners.

I will say our captain had multiple bad experiences with the head ref, and leave it at that. I have also never been in a drivers' meeting where you have not been allowed to ask for clarification on any rules. The live scoring was way worse than at the Canadian regionals (usually accurate within 3 points), while at Buckeye they were out by almost 100 points one match(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3jjWmlpry0) and 20 another.


On the other hand all of the other volunteers that I interacted with were all quite pleasant. As well as everyone I spoke to in the pits from other teams

EDIT: There were a few teams that didn't have their home state/province called out including ours, right before we went up to sing our national anthem. I know there was a what? moment for a lot of us.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I won't speak for my entire team, only my experience. However, I am sure 340 will not be attending the Buckeye Regional in the future.

Last year, our experience with the head referee was not good, but we decided to give it another chance. This year was far worse however. It started for me at the practice day drivers meeting. I had a question about how blockading was going to be called. However to my surprise the Head Ref finished his comments without taking any questions. As he walked off the field, I saw the FTA, who was really good by the way, ask him if he was going to take questions. The FTA then took the mic and informed us that the Head Ref would not be taking questions. I've never seen that happen at any other event. Ever.

Later that same day, I noticed our robot, like at FLR, seemed to find spots of the field that it didn't seem to respond right. I wanted to make the FTA aware of it and see if we could watch our signal strength in the next match to see if it seemed to drop at all. Perhaps this was my mistake, but I decided to walk towards the FTA who was sitting behind the scorers table. I was abruptly stopped by the Head Ref who questioned why I was anywhere near the scorers table. His attitude was abrasive and unprofessional. I explained why I was there and he told me to go to the question box and wait. He proceeded to talk to another referee for a few minuets before letting the FTA know I was there. It was clearly a move by him to try and showcase his authority. It was really a joke to be honest.

And this is all bad calls aside. I understand that mistakes will be made. But it's his attitude that is embarrassing. I want to let all rookies know that most head referees are very pleasant and understanding. They are happy to explain decisions and even apologize if/when a mistake is made.

Being on the field, I heard from several teams that their interactions with him were very negative. He needs to be asked not to come back or the Buckeye regional will quickly become a tough regional to fill.

On a much lighter note, I want to say that I enjoyed spending time with 1126, 1507, 2016, 2252 and 4085. The mentors and students on those teams are awesome and they made a tough event for me a really positive experience.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Wow, what an event! Going from not making eliminations in Fingerlakes to being second alliance captain and taking home a blue banner for the first time in 8 years is really an experience to have. I can't wait to redesign our pit to make a place to display it!

There is no doubt in my mind that we could not have won without the help of 2252 and 2834. Watching this alliance play...there was no way to tell the order that they were chosen. In fact, you couldn't even tell who was the alliance captain! Take any one alliance partner out of the equation (which did happen a few times in fact) and we still had an amazing alliance. It was especially nice meeting and celebrating with the drive team of 2252. Also, it was not until we were on the bus ride back that our coach said to me "so how did you like meeting the Ed Law" and I was like wait, "he was the strategist on 2834 with the laptop?". Ed, if you're still reading this thread, I was the guy from 639 who came over and shook your hand right after alliance selections. You guys are the definition of a steal, it was absolutely criminal and unbelievable that 2834 was not picked early in the first round.

Congratulations to Chairmans winner 2016. Watching the entire arena doing the 'silent clap' in honor of your programs to help the deaf was really, really neat and inspiring. You could tell everyone there was just saying themselves: wow these guys absolutely deserve it.

To Engineering Inspiration winner 1629, just wow. If I get a chance at I want to talk more to you guys about your program at Championships, just to learn how we can improve and emulate a team of your caliber.

One interesting fact: 639 (us), 2016, and 1629 all stayed in the same hotel. Walking down to breakfast yesterday morning, who would have known that we would have all won something that qualifies us for Championships!

I want to give my thanks to all the amazing alliances we played against in Eliminations. 1014, 3266, 4269 - you guys were no slouches and I remember thinking "this will be no cakewalk" right before the first quarterfinals.

The semifinals were real nail biters. 1551, 4085, and 1126 gave us some of the most intense matches I've played. Seeing this alliance put up 156 pts in QF4 made me exceedingly scared going into the Semifinals. I honestly would have been completely okay being beaten by an alliance this caliber in the Semis. To address the call made in SF2-2, I will complain about officiating later in this thread but I would like to note that if it had been not made we still would have won 105-104. By the time Eliminations came around, it was clear that 1551 had really earned their seed. 4085 is a scoring machine and 1126 was another second round steal.

To be honest, my least favorite part of the event was the finals. Going in, I thought our alliance had about a 50-50 chance. 1507, 706 and 3260 were a great alliance. 1507 and 706 were scoring machines and 3260 supported them well. I find it a real pity that we couldn't play against the 'real' 1507 as in F1-1 their shooter didn't seem to be completely working. And to have to call in a backup robot for the alliance captain in F2 is a really sad way to end the regional. 4121 was just about as good as backup bots get but I don't think many robots at the event could fill in a hole left by the first alliance captain. I really wish our alliance could have provided you guys with a WildCard but this was all our first championships qualification this season. It was an honor to play against 1507; you guys continue to inspire us every year.

In fact, I think it is one of the greatest pity's in FIRST that there are not enough awards and Champs qualifications to go around. An amazing team won the Engineering Inspiration award but I'm sure our friends on 340 gave them a run for their money. GRR is another team that constantly inspires us and makes us want to do better, both in robot quality and in outreach. I'm really sorry we will not be seeing the orange of Churchville/Chili in St. Louis this year.

Special shout out to 174 for giving us their front and center seats after we got to eliminations and they didn't. The old fingerlakes teams seem to have a special sort of partnership that is never officialized but just exists.

Now for the regional as its self:

Load in was fine and parking was good. The venue was great for spectators viewing wise but awful concessions wise. The only food you could get was greasy and the boxed lunches were not very good (but what can you expect). The biggest issue was the concessions stands running out of food for parents on our team who had not ordered the boxed lunches. It was very odd to have only two stands open and a ton shuttered with a captive audience.

Volunteers as well were a hit or miss. The head judge was one of the nicest people I've ever met but in trying to find the Chairmans presentation room, our presenters were almost directed into the judges room and immediately afterwards told that if they had entered we would have been removed from consideration for any awards.

The field seemed somewhat worse for wear. The goal counters were almost always off (though they got better as the event went on). The pyramids looked like they were going to fall out and wobbled a little bit.

The officiating was not the best, and I agree that there should not have been a tech foul called in SF2-2. I could see Dante, the head ref from FLR wearing a SparX shirt getting absolutely livid about some of the calls made at this event and I completely agree with him. Our teams run in with the head ref and field personal happened between the finals and semifinals; there should have been a field timeout called because we were playing back to back matches, instead we were forced to use our coupon so two robots on our alliance could make repairs. We also got a weird penalty for 'destroying the field' when the carpet just become untaped while we were driving over it.

Announcer JonDarr was amazing as usual but the announcer on Thursday was insulting and unprofessional. His embarrassing jokes and penchant for making fun of teams that weren't making their shots made me want to miss our practice matches so he wouldn't poke fun at us. If he had continued past lunch we would have lodged a formal complaint with the regional director but it looks like someone else did and he got kicked off. The MC was good but not on the tier of someone like Angry Eric or Karthik. He did what he needed to and got the crowd going but was rather wooden and scripted when introducing teams and giving opening ceremonies.

Pit Admin was really good in general though matches queuing 30 minutes early was somewhat inconvenient. The practice field from my view was fine, though nothing to write home about.

I don't mean any of this as a knock on the volunteers who made this event run smoothly and ahead of schedule for most of the time. It's unfortunate that we end up remembering the bad things that happen and not the things that go perfectly.

Finally, the match schedule was wonky. I know this has nothing to do with the event its self and completely luck but the seeding positions were luck, pure and simple. We were second seed because we coasted through our first four matches with great alliances before getting our robot working and actually winning matches on our own merit. The same thing happened with 1551. Other teams like our partners 2252 and 2834 ended up underseeded due to bad schedules. However, by the end of the event, I think all the top 8 had truly earned their seeds.

Finally, if FTA Paul is reading this thread, we did end up finding out Robot Lockup Form right after we told you we lost it.

Overall, Buckeye was a fun regional but I don't know if we would return to it. The officiating is a major problem. There are certainly some problems that need to be worked out but I hope the planning committee will take all that has been said into consideration and make it better next year.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Can I just say, as soon as you guys picked up 2834, I was dumbfounded. I couldn't even fathom has they had fallen so far in the draft. Props to you guys, Simon, as it tells me you did your homework where others did not.

Congrats on joining the group of Finger Lakes teams who qualified for champs! I look forward to seeing you guys out there!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I felt absolutely awful for SparX and the rest of their alliance in SF2-1 when that foul was called and gave them their first loss. But that tech foul in SF2-2... I just saw the flag and the "x" symbol and everyone on the team just looked at me, wondering what the call was for. I couldn't tell them; I had absolutely no idea. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they got another foul that round, causing them to lose from the 23 foul points awarded to the other team.

I've had a fondness for SparX since we were at Buckeye with them two years ago. I just find it a shame.

I was, however, very happy to see 2016 become our first pick in alliance selections! I, for one, noticed that their overall OPR wasn't as high as some other available picks, but their vast improvement made them an absolute steal when it came time for us to pick someone. It doesn't hurt that them and 177 were with us in the 2011 world finals; I'm sure James, our driver and member of the drive team for 3 years, was pleased to get reacquainted, along with some other members of the team who got to know a few of them that year. I regret not having met them 2 years ago, even though I had the full capability of speaking to them in St. Louis.

I won't comment on specifics concerning the regional itself, but rest assured I personally won't vote to go to Buckeye ever again. Queen City was fun, but it's unfortunate that it fell on Waterloo this year (again, best event I've ever been to: Waterloo 2013. It's great every year, but this year it was something else).

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I will pass the shout out along.

About 174, I don't know if anyone really knows the troubles we had this season, but let me just say that with the work the students put in to making the robot work and be as competitive as possible was beyond ANY other year in our history. There hasn't been a group of students like this for us ever and even though we hadn't had any of the kind of success we had last year I would say we discovered more about ourselves and our team.

Team 174 extends a congratulations to 639, 2252 and 2834, to team 2016 and 1629. You were all amazing teams to watch and we wish you all good luck for the rest of the year.

I wasn't at the event, so I have no comment about how the competition was run. What I will say is that if there was a problem, teams should contact the planning committee for Buckeye, rather than only rant about it on CD - otherwise nothing might be changed.

(on a side note, I picked 639 to win FLR in my Pickem show. I guess I get half credit for you guys winning a different regional? :D )

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I would like to thank the FTA for his willingness to help clarify any issues. The live scoring seemed to have malfunctioned in our first quarter-final and we wondered how we all of a sudden lost 20 points. We thought somebody forgot to count the coloured discs 3496 scored in the pyramid goal for our alliance. He was willing to look on the score sheet and talk to us to see if there were any goals that were miscounted. Turns out that it was just the live scoring that was wrong. Kudos to the FTA for looking into it!

I would also like to thank 2016 and 3496 for being great teammates. I was on the practice field during alliance selection and was thoroughly surprised when I found out that we were the 6th alliance with a great floor pick-up bot and a consistent climb-and-dumper. We went into our quarter-final matches confident that we had a high chance of winning the regional as a low-seeded alliance. We ended up falling in the quarters however to a strong third seed. That last match was incredibly hectic and exciting, and really could have gone either way depending on how the fouls would have been called. Incredible job on defence, 1126, you guys really made sure to keep us back in your own field!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Regarding the quality of the event, I was personally extremely disappointed with a few things in comparison to the event that we have attended in Pittsburgh for the past few years. To start off the event, we ran into a lot of issues with our pit. When we attempted to fit through the door provided for loading in, our pit setup was about a half of an inch too wide to fit through. We were initially told by the security guard stationed at the entrance that we could take our pit through the loading dock and that it would not be an issue. When we arrived at the loading dock, we were berated and yelled at by two of the security guards for a few minutes about how we were in the wrong place and that we had no right to bring our pit down there. Although I realize that they may have not wanted us to use the loading dock, there was no reason at all to be so rude especially when we had just been told by another security guard that it would just fine if we brought our pit in through the loading dock.

As a whole, the staff/volunteers were excellent except for a few people who really had an adverse effect on the overall quality. As multiple people have stated, the head ref was easily one of the rudest people that I have EVER met at any robotics related event. We were not allowed to ask for any clarification on rules and there were multiple instances where it had seemed that he had yet to even read the rule book himself. On Thursday, the announcer insulted our team by saying that teams from Pittsburgh "were not welcome" and then shunned immediately after the match once again for our home location. These were not the only rude comments that we had heard throughout the day and in my opinion the insults that he made went way overboard. It's a shame that a few individuals left such a negative mark on the event for us but it does not seem likely that we will be returning next year.

On a more positive note, I'd like to thank 1507 and 706 for allowing us to be on their Alliance. I'm sorry that our shooter wasn't working correctly, we hadn't had any issues with prior jams and the points that were missing because of our Autonomous not functioning were a clear issue. We really do appreciate you giving us the chance to be on your Alliance and we hope to have the pleasure of being at the same event as you in the future. Congratulations to the winning Alliance of 639, 2252, and 2834. You guys were amazing and all deserve to be in St. Louis. We'd also like to congratulate 1629 on winning Engineering Inspiration and 2016 on winning the Chairman's award. The excellence shone by both of your teams was clear and there was no question in anyone's mind that you guys deserved the awards that you had received.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Is there video of the match in question?

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Team 1629 would like to thank 2603, and 3003, for playing with us during the elimination rounds, we were struggling a bit to find the accuracy on our long range shooter, but you guys were able to carry us in the matches.

Congrats to the winning alliance, 639, 2252, 2834, you all had an amazing strategy and it worked out in your favor, great matches, well played!!!

Congrats also go out to 2016 for your Chairmans Award win, you all are an amazing team that every FIRST team should want to emulate.

Now for the bad....

Yes, I will agree, the Head Referee is terrible, it seems that he has gotten worse over the past couple of years. For someone in that position to not allow the students to be able to ask questions concerning the actual RULES posted by FIRST is simply ridiculous. He is very unprofessional, rude, intimidating, and obnoxious. We noticed this a few years ago when we had a question about a match, and we got the same treatment again this year when asking for a rule clarification. I for one will not vote to come back to Buckeye unless they get a different head referee.

The load-in. The load in is ok, except for the fact that you have to use the shipping elevator. Things would go 150% better if you could back up to the dock, load, and leave. I think this is a Cleveland State Rule for whatever reason. I have not liked that since we have been attending the regional.

I will agree with everyone else about the concessions, one stand, no food, and short hours.

The good.....

The rest of the volunteers, the rest of the referees, the emcees, all did an amazing job. Well run, and quite polite.

The judges are always amazing and allow the kids to really demonstrate and tell their story. They are not hurried, and really get into what the kids are talking to them about. Well done judges.

Parking is great and cheap, all close and all seem to allow trailers in their lots.

Overall, the event was fun, but there were a few negatives that can make for a bad experience. If just a few things change, this event will be top notch, if not, it will be a tough fill. Hopefully the people in charge will get the message and make the appropriate decisions!!!

Good Luck to all team in the upcoming regionals, and good luck to all teams participating at the World Championships, we will see you there!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

With all the posts of "I will vote not to attend" I wanted to echo this. Before making up your mind, send feedback to the VC of the event.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

The wonderful folks at 3266 are working diligently to get all the matches uploaded. They're up to Q-46. So I imagine some time in the next day or three it'll be on the Tube of Yous.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Psh, I suppose I can wait (are they done yet). ;)

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

team 2252 is in the process of uploading all of our matches now they should be up soon the match in question will be there as well

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Our team took video of all matches we were in (which this one we were). I'll see if I can get them uploaded to Youtube.

I would like to take the time to say, however that it doesn't feel good to win a match due to a penalty. Please understand that it is just as painful for us to see bad officiating on the 'winning' side of it as it was for the teams on the losing side of it.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

As a volunteer from this year's event, I will pass on some of the remarks. However, I hope that you all will contact the coordinator yourselves to voice your opinions. I'm extremely sorry that some of you have had bad experiences, but I hope that you will try to make the event better instead of simply leaving. That will only hurt the program. It's breaking my heart to see so many teams vowing to never attend the regional over one person.

Regarding the early queuing, I apologize. Pit admin has no control over when to queue people. We're given a list of matches and we call it out. We worked with the queuing volunteers to slow it down eventually.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

It was great seeing you at the competition. I completely agree with what you are saying here. I noticed this as well, even when I personally talked to him about a foul. He was rude and only responded to me by saying "G30" and sent me on my way. The ref was a total bully.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Don't worry about it, it wasn't a major problem. Pit Admin was one of the bright parts of the event to me, you guys were always friendly and willing to help. In fact, synth3tk, I think I remember you in particular coming over to our pit and being really concerned about us not being queued for a match that we were late to and thinking it was really nice that you were doing that.

As for the Head Ref being bad, it certainly seems to be agreed upon in this thread. The thing is, if any other volunteer were not friendly, it would not have had a huge effect on the event. However, the Head Referee is the "ultimate source of authority in the arena". It isn't really the fault of the Buckeye regional but FIRST for choosing to train him as a Head Ref and giving him that power.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Really sorry guys! We're moving at a sluggish 80 minutes per match video... I would compress them down to a smaller file type but that would take just as long to do each one. :rolleyes: I promise we're getting 'em up as fast as we can. (but in the mean time if you guys really want SF2-1/2 up I can upload that one out of order no problemo)

edit: SF2-1 will be here when it's done uploading.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Keep in mind you're doing everyone a favour, so no apologizing.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Like when you are then told that you may play a 3rd match and then decides "nope."

I usually try to stay out of these things, but I feel like I may as well say something.

My first interaction with the head referee was in 2011 when I was the drive coach for 1126. I got a bad impression from the Driver's meeting on Thursday, but I do recall people being able to ask questions. Throughout those three days, I dreaded interacting with him because it was generally unpleasant. This year, I made a road trip on Saturday to cheer on 1126 as well as catch up with some friends, seeing as a good portion of Finger Lakes teams were also attending. I was sad to see that things had not really changed, and had apparently gotten worse. Although I did not interact with any volunteers, it was frustrating to see bad officiating, especially when it was negatively affecting my friends. This subject, I feel, has been beaten to death, but I still do not think it is okay.

These opinions are my own, and I cannot say all that much because I was there for one day and did not interact with many of the volunteers. I am glad that there are great volunteers that were there this weekend, but there were some things that did not seem to go as smoothly as they did during week 1. It is really amazing how much of a difference having a great field crew makes (shameless plug for Finger Lakes).

I had a great time, but it is unfortunate when some of that is diminished because the quality of the regional just isn't where (I have heard, I wasn't there) it used to be.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I will full heartedly agree that the head ref wasn't performing at his best. To bring attention to a specific example, as Justin had, would probably have to be one of our last qualifying matches on Saturday. During the match, as we were driving to the pyramid to shoot off our load of disks, the carpet flew up. However, behind the glass, we couldn't tell, so we pushed again. This resulted in the entire front portion of the carpet surrounding the pyramid folding up upon itself. In the heat of the moment, we moved around it, and willingly accepted the penalty, expecting it to just blow over.

However, upon further consultation from team members and friends around the event, the head ref was looking at a bump exactly where we hit that was torn up at the conclusion of the match prior, yet decided to leave it be. Not to mention that after our match concluded, we inspected the field to see the damage we thought we caused. By this time, the carpet had returned to its natural state, and it was realized that the area the tape covered on the ground was hardly touching the carpet near the pyramid. Our coach decided to pose a question about the penalty, but the decision was inconclusive.

At the end of it all, we were more or less confused, but didn't pose a huge fuss about it.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

As coach of 3496 My teams will never be going back to the Buckeye again.
This has been our (home) since 2003.

I am so glad we went to cinc,i it was a pleasure to work with a High Quality ref.

I can truly say that our alliance was stopped short due to a head and a female ref. They were constintly arguing. I feel we wasted our $4000.00 on this trip
Students that work this hard deserve to be treated better and fairly. Iwill stop here.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

FIRST does not determine volunteers, the regional committee does.

If you have a complaint (and it sounds like a lot of teams do) it would be important to contact the volunteer coordinator. Also contact FIRST, they do not determine who the head ref is but they can and have banned people from the role.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I didn't know that. How does the selection of Head Ref actually work? Is there no additional qualification other than being chosen by the regional planners?

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Reference http://www.usfirst.org/community/vol...s/head-referee

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Sorry for not answering, but I'm guessing that your question was already answered.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Hey guys, take the win and be proud of your performance. Sometimes bad calls change game outcomes -- it happens in football and elsewhere, too -- and we'd all rather that not happen*, but when it does, don't let it belittle your accomplishments.

A win's a win, and you won that blue banner. And I was glad to see you do it. 639 has always been a class act and a great, motivated, dedicated team. You're also fun to hang around with in the pits!



*I've already spoken my piece about the officiating on the official FIRST week five survey, so I'll not do so here.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

We had a simular experience while trying to leave. We found the CSU security to be rude and obnoxious. While we were waiting to load our trailer they told us they called a “HOOKER” to tow it away because we were not supposed to be in that area. That was after another security person told us to go to gate “C” for loading. The security staff is not prepared and definitely not trained to handle a FIRST load-in and load-out process. In the future I would recommend a FIRST experienced person handle the process.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

You should consider contacting the Volunteer Coordinator and FIRST as should everyone who has complaints about the behavior of the Head Referee.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

If they hadn't picked them, we were going to. :p

On-topic though, I would just like to thank everyone on our Alliance from 706's excellent offensive capabilities to 3260's excellent all around offensive and defensive play and finally to 4121 who tried admirably to fill in for us.

It's sad to hear about such horrible encounters with the head referee. I was only at the regional on Saturday so I wasn't aware of such issues with the officiating, but it's disconcerting all the same.

Congratulations to all of the winners and especially the Chairman's Award winner. Regardless of any issues there might have been with the Refs, it was a very fun Regional and I'm glad I took the time to come down to see FLR: Part Deux. :cool:

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

The following message is from the Buckeye Regional planning committee. They really want to make things right and need to hear from all of you:

Hello team mentors.

Now that the Buckeye Robotics event is over, we would like to get your feedback on this years event so that we can make changes to make next year even better.

Please send me an email, or you can fill out the feedback form at http://www.oai.org/firstbuckeye/

Whether your comments are positive or negative, we would like to know what you liked and disliked about this years event. What we do not know, we can not fix, so please let us know if you have any concerns, suggestions, or tips we could incorporate for next year.

Thank you in advance and we hope you all had a great time at this past weekends event.

Angela Surgenor
frcbuckeyecoord@gmail.com

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

The committees pick the Head Ref, but FIRST has the right to veto the committees decision.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I have submitted my feedback to the committee, hopefully something is done about this. Our team enjoys this regional and would like to keep on coming back!!!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Did anyone write down the order of the alliance selections?

I'm hoping someone can confirm Simon's order, below.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

On alliance number 7 the second and third pick should be reversed. But otherwise I believe that is all correct!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

I just wanted to take this moment and thank the planning committee for taking all the feedback and working to improve it. Our team's contact has been getting a stream of emails about the Thursday announcing, judging rooms, etc...

Big kudos to the committee for reading through all this and trying to improve for next year!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Did team 2252 tell team 2834 how glad they are that 2834 decided to head to Cleveland for the very first time? =] We hope you come again!

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

639 couldn't agree more! That was an alliance we will remember for a very long time.

Re: 2013 Buckeye Regional
 

Has anyone learned whether or not the less than happy issues discussed in this 2013 event thread have been properly addressed for the 2014 competition, specifically in regards to the Head Referee?