Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I was at my brothers football game today, and it ended with a bang… a fight broke out and the game was over. I was wondering if there has ever been a fight like after a match, or maybe in the pits?

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

At the end of the inagural Montreal regional while I was helping tear down the field I noticed two boys standing face to face nearby and shouting at each other. it was in French so I didn't know what they were saying or what the dispute was about but I knew aggression was. I got between them and yelled at the bigger one to go away. He was still hot and was trying to get back over but his teammate was walking with him and was blocking his path back over. I turned to see how the other boy was doing. He was surrounded by three of his teammates and another boy from another team who were really letting him have it. Looking back on the incident it would not surprise me one bit if the whole thing was over a girl.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Well I have never seen a fist to fist fight but I have been at an FTC qualifier that you saw coaches and parents yell at the FTA for the system messing up. Now granted this event started like 4 hours late and ended at 10 Pm when it was suppose to end at 6, but It got pretty crazy between the adults.

I think a student had to tell his coach to cool it because he got really angry about the score of the match and wanted a redo.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

And I thought 30 minute delays between matches was bad...

I can't even imagine what kind of reactions this would cause if it happened at an FRC regional or district CMP. What could even cause an event to start so late?

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

The FTC control system is not fun. I don't know how long ago this was, but until this year, it has been an nightmare for us in Michigan to get working consistently. In our first year it was rare for competitions to not be an hour or two behind, with a few being three or four hours slow. Recently we've got it quite better, but I think that is more because of our experience than improvements in the system.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Not to my knowledge. However, there was one event that ended badly... due to control system issues all the time, teams refusing to recognize results, stuff like that. A team that had just been eliminated staged a sit-in on the field to demand a rematch. That was a few years ago, and the event went much better the following year.


I think the long-standing rule about uncivil behavior not being tolerated helps keep the fights down.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I haven't seen fisticuffs in eleven years of doing this. I've seen arguments that stopped the show for over an hour, but no physical blows.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Although I do know you have been attacked with a clipboard from time to time...

Nope, me neither: In 10 years, never saw a punch thrown. Kinda nice, that.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

There was a significant dust up between two guys outside of the dome when one of them tried to jump the line just before the doors opened. The names of the two well regarded teams the two were from shall remain unmentioned since the incident was not a representation of what the teams stand for;) this incident was just one of the many incidents that led to the positive changes we saw regarding crowd control this year. Kudos Frank and company!

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

At a district event this year a volunteer was harassed during load in by a mentor from a team trying to cut in line. The mentor was a about to punch the volunteer had another adult not broken up th confrontation. This type of behavior is unacceptable, especially from mentors

Sadly, lots of the behavior problems I have seen at competitions have been from mentors, the ones students are supposed to look up to.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

There was one at championship 2012 over some seats that a team had believed that they were entitled to for their students that were unable to get wristbands for Einstein seating. It could be seen off the live steam as I'm told by my family. It wasn't anything big but its now a pun when it comes to referencing that team (which by the way is one of the most respected teams in FRC). But again it was a few young students starting it all.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I had a fight with my robot once during competition.

I felt bad about it and apologized.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I have lost every fight I had with our robots and have the scars to prove it:D

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I fought with my student's robot this year... and it ended up knocking me to the ground.... (make sure your catapults safty mechanism works, and doesnt misfire... ow.)

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I got capped by a robot in 2005, because I was wearing a partially visible green collar under a volunteer t-shirt, while doing field reset on Curie. It was entirely my fault -- the robot was just doing its job. :o

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

IIRC, the cream colored volunteer shirts that year were often picked up as "green" by the CMU cams. It probably wasn't your collar.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I have seen a couple parents screaming at the referee after a red card was called in the semis in 2010, and then going around the concourse of the stadium screaming at the top of their lungs about how much they hate FIRST. That was a bad day.

I purposefully omitted the competition and team association for obvious reasons.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I guess you could say that this is one argument against FIRST being a sport. We dont have has many fights compared to other traditional sports. So glad we dont. We dont need a penalty box as part of the field!

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

The 1610 robot was looking for a fight. However, instead of hitting the robot back, the 2363 HP graciously gave it back the ball.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Funniest thing I've seen on CD for a while!

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

He said he was so focused on our robot that he didn't even notice it until he looked down right before it nailed him in the face.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Best i recall being told about this....This happened just after some
code had been changed before the match and when it went in Auto mode
it turned for some reason and then shot like it was supposed to. Needless
to say that was fixed before the next match....Maybe the robot was just
saying...."I want you to play with me"

When i saw the video later his reaction was priceless.
I've been hit and shot at plenty of times over the years by our
robots. (intentional or not)

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Wait till you see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnE0j69_gYk

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I feel like we need a "Game Pieces to the Face" compilation now.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Don't get me started on how many frisbees I've seen people get hit in the head with last year.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Our resident SuperNerd™

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXY_DI1PnM4

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

At the Crossroads regional this year, a person came down from the stands and "physically accosted" a ref after their team lost a match in the semifinals.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

That person should have been removed from the arena and permabanned from FIRST competitions. There's no excuse to get physical with a volunteer. I could care less about how much time was spent on the robot or how much money the team spent getting to the event. You don't do that. Period.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Yeah that's pretty good!

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I have never witnessed a fight at a FIRST event in my nine years of mentoring. Hope not to.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

The best part is Libby's comment
Very supportive.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

At CMP in 2010 there was a very loud, very abusive woman saving seats (like, eighty of them). She accosted my brother and his wife and screamed hideous, vulgar abuse (think words that start with F and C, combined in some admittedly creative ways, at the top of her lungs) at them because they had the audacity to sit down to watch one of our matches. I tried to explain to her that saving seats was not allowed anyway, but she just turned her vitriol on me--and I had to get back to the pits, so she went back to them. His intent was to ignore her until she ran out of steam, but she kept going for literally minutes--which is a terrifically long time in this sort of circumstance. He finally (in a soft voice) said that he felt threatened, and that his training teaches him to kill threats.

She left him alone after that, but sheesh, it shouldn't have been necessary. Were she a man, it likely would have become a physical altercation. (Yay, sexism/chivalry!)

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Since that video (which I still find hilarious! Sorry), I've taken game pieces to the face several times, including a Frisbee to the eye last year that had me wearing an eyepatch in my sleep for about a month. (And yes, I WAS wearing safety glasses. They didn't help.)

Karma.

To the original point: I've seen things get ugly, and like Ed said above - those people need to be banned. You don't treat volunteers or fellow teams like that. Sadly, it's one of the side effects of a competitive environment that we're going to occasionally run into -- but it's up to teams not to allow that culture within themselves. Gracious Professionalism is the first lesson our students get on 1923. Would your grandmother be proud of your behavior?

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I'll bet they did!

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Nope! Frisbee hit right at the top edge of mine, knocking them down off my nose and giving the Frisbee a nice clear path directly to my eye.

What DID help was the net slowing it down. I was at the side of the field taking pictures, right near the net. The Frisbee left the robot from the side of the field (maybe 3 feet in from the rail. pointing right at me to shake out a jam) and without the net to slow it, I surely wouldn't even remember the incident.

I think video exists of the shot (I'm just barely out of frame except for the recovery, or else I'm sure it'd be as GIF-able as the Dean video), but I can't remember which match it was or where I saw it.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

We trussed once at MSC and it went a little bit too far, landing right where the governor was standing a second earlier...

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Oh yeah. His security detail looked like he was ready to dive in front of the ball and take one for the team to protect the governor form the marauding robot.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

It does... and it is. Maybe I'll try to hunt it down.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Fair enough. I remember the patch and the caution, but not the exact circumstances. Glad no permanent harm was done!

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I've not seen any fights. The 2005 Season was the closest I've seen. But that was in the dark ages before some of the GP rules and bumpers.

As a volunteer, I've had some people get rather ungraciously professional to me. Reminding them their behavior towards volunteers gets reported to the judges in relation to their team seems check that PRETTY quick.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

In 9 years and 18 events, I have never seen students get into a fight with each other.

However, I have seen mentors get in very heated arguments with volunteers.

As for injuries, I've seen two different mentors lose a fingertip in a chain/sprocket scenario in different years/different robots. I've also seen a staffer accidentally cut themselves during set-up.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

When game pieces attack

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I would love to see a compilation video of this!

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

The closest I've seen was sort of comical:

Three members of another team (not named for obvious reasons) came over before alliance selections to check in on how our robot was holding up. The two male members that had come over were standing behind the one female member, and one of them whispered something to the other. They proceeded to get into a huge shoving match (that almost came to blows) as their teammate obliviously chatted with my teammate - she had absolutely no idea what was going on. Luckily, someone broke it up pretty quickly, and I ended up cracking up later on when our pit neighbor's coach mouthed "What the..." to me.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

We must get a video of this! who has videos, a Mac, and good editing skills?

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Our drive coach thought it might be cool to put a GoPro on our human player... hilarity ensued...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g4MSCjrd0M

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

At Crossroads in qualifying match #52, our team had a drop of power to our router (intermittent wiring issue that should have been caught but plagued us through several matches, you can see the response our human player had) that caused our router to reset resulting in a dead robot for about 20 seconds or so while we had the ball. Dead ball was called and another ball entered play. When our robot came back online the ball needed to be cleared, they rushed a shot at the high goal and missed low. The referee was telling them that they just needed to clear the ball from the field, so they picked the ball up went to the side to just shoot it out of bounds and nearly shot one of the field refs in the face. Our robot uses a leverage plate with a lot of bungee cord tension to hit the ball from below so it makes quite the THWAP when it shoots the ball. There was a lot of confusion and the head ref directed the ball to be put back on the field, which we just barely shot in the high goal before the end of the match.

I must say, they were definitely not aiming at the ref, just trying to clear the ball. The response of the ref as the robot is preparing to launch the ball is funny now to watch, but I cannot see how anybody else would react differently. These volunteers definitely put themselves "in the line of fire" and I respect them for that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyAXZ-wyOxU#t=77

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Nick on a stick! Nick on a stick! Nick on a stick! Nice headshot by the way.

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Championships in 2012 right before Einstein was horrendous for me as a volunteer as I was in a crowd control/entry position for those with wristbands. I'm not sure if you saw another instance of mentors/parents arguing with a volunteer if you saw another volunteer and I trying to explain the seats they were in were reserved for those with wristbands which was why they were taped off and we had a team that hadn't been seated yet. I haven't been back since that year (not because of this incident but due to work obligations) so I do not know if they adjusted how this is done to make it less stressful for everyone.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Quite a bit has been done, especially this year. After the 2012 incidents with the field, security was stepped up around the field - no more volunteer gatekeepers, it's now handled by event staff and arena security.

Also, with fewer awards at the Einstein level (and more on divisions), there are NO student wristband seats on the floor anymore. The one exception is a Mascot area (?? not sure why, I don't think that'll be back next year) and for the FRC CCA winner (and its FLL/FTC counterparts).

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

The frisbees only hurt for a minute -- after you wake up from the hit...

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

i have never seen one at one of my FRC competitions but when i volunteered at an FLL regional i had a bunch of mentor and parents yelling at me about the score being wrong. most of them were wrong but we still had to go back and check every team score.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Not sure if this is universal, but in MN, the scoring sheet is signed by the ref and a student and 'by definition' when the student signs the sheet, the missions accomplished as marked stand. The score sheet is data entered TWICE into the excellent software (which is not used universally everywhere) by two different volunteers and if the data entry matches, the score is accepted, otherwise one data entry volunteer has to change their answer after resolving who is right.

I do know of one team that signed off, but later informed the ref that they got points for a mission they did not accomplish and their score was lowered. I think this helped them earn an award from the judges who heard the story at lunch time.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I know when I did Vex they did this at the SC state championship. It prevented several arguments (some by my own team).

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Ohhhh, my sides! Ref be like "Ummm... is that robot aiming at me?"

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I heard once that someone got punched in the face at CMP 2013 over a seat (Not surprising really). Like this is why I like being pit crew, we have an insta-bench where the drive team and two lucky volunteers can sit comfortably.
Oh yeah, and in 2014 the robot went crazy and tried to run me over. The assault wasn't aerial, but it was still assault.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Well at one of our districts this year we were thethering our robot and randomly autonomous was enabled and unfortunately, I was in front of the robot, yes I was injured, suffered some brusing on my shin, when we thether now, we put blocks under the robot:D if you consider this a fight, and in this case, the robot did win

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Yep, there's been scuffles at a few events I've been to throughout the years, but nothing close to a full blown fight.

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

2014 was a bad year for yelling at refs because of how the gameplay worked. It didn't help that one of my team's best defensive strategies was ramming into our opponents at full speed (~16 fps that year- 3 CIM drive), which sometimes created unexpected situations :P

Also, I notice that I usually (students do it too) see these issues with parents/mentors; which I think shows that FIRST's attempts to indoctrinate us with Gracious Professionalism might be working

that being said, I dont remember ever seeing a full-blown fight

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

???

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Sorry Nate but that didn't actually happen. I have spoken to both parties involved and it was really just a misunderstanding.

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If I remember correctly, that rule was tightened halfway-ish through the season because of robots like us (which is part of the reason we got so many penalties for a while)...

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Yep, the Thursday of week 4 the rule became a lot more strict.

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I remember that--you never want the head ref coming over during an event and telling you (as a ref) that there's been an update and this is what it does.

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Yep... We had to call another drivers meeting Friday morning to make sure all the teams knew.

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You still have all of your fingers....somehow.::ouch::

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

Or he can type really well with just a few fingers :ahh:

Re: Has there ever been a fight at compeition?
 

I was at an event one year and the team in the pit next to us 2 students began to argue and one threw a punch while another team member was trying to hold the person back. The punch missed and the student was escorted out of the pits. The team went on to win the safety award at that event.

A few years later at Champs the same team was involved in a confrontation with a volunteer that I've known for a long time. They repeatedly ran their robot cart into the person trying to take the robot home from the event when they didn't have the proper paperwork.