BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Ok, so its over...for another year.

121, 126, and 350...you guys earned your spot without a doubt as regional champs.
501, you guys certainly are well deserving of Chairmans, and its been a long time coming.

To the rookies: you guys have a year under your belt...take this past weekend, build off your experiences and come back out fighting next year.


Now for my rant.

BAE is always a great competition...however, i think there was a huge lapse in coordination. Last year, the traffic flow of people around the arena was managable...this year, it was a safety hazard. TOO MANY PEOPLE tried to walk down the front aisle of the stands, while the teams where in the next row from that cheering their heads off.
Whatever they did last year, should be thought about long and hard for next year.
I think BAE needs a few more things....like less security personell. i swear i'd walk wrong and there was a "yellow jacket" was there to give me lip about it. They also need to TURN THE MUSIC DOWN. It was seriously DEAFINING in the arena today.

those are a few of the things that i would like to rant about...and we will see what happens in march of 06

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Well as long as everyone wearing their safety glasses as they walked down the front aisle they would be fine I imagine :-P J/p

:-P

Heh Congrats to the BAE CHAMPS

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Greg, jot down a few notes about the concerns you have. Be sure to add a couple of things that were done right too. Mentors will be invited to a team forum this spring. Give to mentor. If no mentor going, send to me and I will make sure your voice is heard.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

I would agree, Clinton/Nypro had an awesome robot, and paired with 350 and 121, they were literally unstoppable.

As for the walking...I spent a lot of time in the pits, but when i was out, i agree. They should rope of the first row in fron of the aisles...i mean, it's bad enough trying to get a flow of traffic both directions, but when people have their feet sticking out in the way it makes it even harder.

AS for gameplay, it was rough...very rough. The final matches had lots of hard hits, but what my question is, is what exactly is "intentional ramming" count as?? In 2 matches yesterday playing against the same team, our robot was repeatedly hit from about midfield, until we literally we stuck under a goal(luckily our arm was good enough to get us out). It had happened the match before, and the ref. didn't say anything, so we let him know that this team would probably try and do it to us, or team 126 (nypro/clinton) Gael Force, because thats what they had done. When we were playing we had to actually ask the ref to look at them ramming us, it was THEN that he threw a flag, but i wonder, after the match they said they couldn't count it because they had to give them a warning...does that make it ok? Thankfully we fort knoxed our bot, but if it was a less fortunate team getting hit, would it be ok for them to potentially damage a robot enough they couldn't drive (these hits were HARD), but not get any type of penalization for it?. SOrry for the rant but i was pretty heated when we got off the field and i told them they should stop hitting so hard, and their drive menotr told me "the drivers didn't know they were back so far". four times it happened in just that match though. but oh well, thats the game. sorry for ranting.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Congrates 501!!!! From your alliance partner from last year. Team 176

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

The parts of the competition that I saw were quite exciting. I agree with the claim that the music was too loud, and since I didn't spend a lot of time in the lower level of the audience, I don't know about the crowding problem.

Some highlights:

126- amazing robot, and they obviously deserved this win
121- see above
175- although they were a little tippy and their robot unfortunately suffered some damage throughout the elimination rounds, they had a very cool arm with a good range of motion
133- capped the center goal in autonomous occasionally (started with tetra, not a vision system)

No one seemed to have a working camera, and for the qualifiers, autonomous wasn't important. However, when eliminations hit, the autonomous became a lot more important. The winning alliance's combined autonomous made it so that they had 5 points before the end of autonomous, and only one goal needed to be owned to make a row. In addition, 126 was in position to grab two tetras and make that row.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Ahhh a tricky question but I would say as long as the team stopped ramming you once you were stuck they were legal. Ramming into a disabled robot is intentionally trying to do damage to it.
Actually the security was excellent there. I saw some pretty idiotic and dangerous things happening that the security needed to prevent. I saw quite a few people think it was ok to play balancing beam on a wall just to get to the pits faster even though they would crack their heads open if they fell. People sliding down the stair handrails. People not where they were supposed to be despite the fact that there were signs saying Do not go here.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Great job teams 121, 126, and 350!!
I had the opportunity to watch BAE today, and it was very exciting, especially those last few matches. Excellent job!

I think there was a new record high score today for this regional... of 79 points. Unfortunately, the alliance teams' names/numbers are escaping me.

The highest amount of penalties given that I saw today was 40 points... I believe it was for pushing a robot in the loading zone, among other things. The magnitude of the penalties really seemed to be the downfall of many well performing teams... but that is how the game goes. It is very different from previous years (at least recent ones).

It seems like an even balance between offense and defense was the key to success. Offense without defense was not very effective if other robots were trying to harass the offensive ones. Also, without some defense, you are leaving the opposing alliance completely unharassed and are allowing them to score easily. But then again, pure defense simply could not score enough points to win the game. A nice combination of the two seemed to be very effective... team 501, the Power Knights (very effective defense), and their alliance (very effective offense), comes to mind.

Here, as it has also been reported at other regionals, there were very few teams with autonomous modes that were effective, and I did not see any team cap the vision tetra in autonomous mode once. It seems like the majority of teams with an autonomous mode are going for the hanging tetras, which in my opinion, is smart because it gives you the beginning of a row, and is relatively low risk in terms of interference from other robots.

One thing I noticed that teams need to work on, is realizing the best strategical place to cap next. I found myself screaming, "No! CAP OVER THERE... NOT THERE!" Teams often wouldn't recognize where the best place was to cap... and I understand this, as there is so much going on on the field at once... but if you are looking to improve your strategy, try to focus on recognizing where the most advantageous place is to put your next tetra.

Great job everyone...it was an enjoyable event to watch.

-- Jaine

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

<off topic>
See Highest Score thread on CD, 98 in Peachtree I believe. (Originally was 108 but with a 10 pt penalty.)
</off topic>

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

I meant high score for the regional, not internationally. :) Thanks though.

-- Jaine

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Gotcha.
My bad! :ahh:

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Hard hitting... and bots were breaking? I don't know what to say... our robot and arm got a severe beating almost every single match and we didn't have any real mechanical issues besides some loose chain. Maybe our arm was a design fluke (it can lift my up from horizontal at near full extension) but it didn't look as beefy as other arms out there.... who knows. I think the amount of hitting and such was appropriate, robots have to be designed for it. However, the amount of pinning was a bit too much... I'd like to see less of that.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Yes i agree, the robots should be built for it, but there's a point where it's too hard. I forgot the #, but a team actually lost a chain hitting us, and team 155 (thank you for playing with us) had their frame get bent and lost a chain in the next to last match of our semifinals.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

BAE was my first regional and I enjoyed it so much.

My team 1027, THE MECHATRONIC MANIACS, we were an offensive machine. We had the highest average score (of 19 per match) at the end of the qualifying. In the finals our alliance of Team 40 (Trinity High) and 501 (see above) we were slated to go all the way except a holding penatly by 501 allowed 175's (AKA Buzz) alliance to move on.

At the end of the qualifying we finished in 3rd place with a record of 7-1-1, and when everything sorted out we finished 10th.

Congrats to the Rhode Warriors and their alliance!!!

BUT WATCH OUT FOR TEAM 1027 at the Chesakpeake Regionals!!!

-Also, I left early but does anyone know what was up with the fire alarm at the regional??? Dean Kamean was in the middle of presenting the Chairman's Award to the great defender team 501.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Congrats 1027!! It was awesome just talking to your whole team, and playing with you guys was really great. I loved your openness to listen to our strategy, and adapt with us so that together we could win. I was rooting for you! Good luck at Chesapeake!

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Does anyone have or found pictures of the better bots of competition such as 121, 126, or 350. As well as the Finalists, 175, 138, 58 and any other standouts?

Congrats to everyone that went to competition. You survived!

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

This is my First year in the program i loved every min of it. I do aggre with there being too meny yellow men in the Verizon center (i took a nap and the man is yellow woke me up how rude) but i liked how everything was set up and the safety in the place was unbeliveable i never thought that all thouse people in the pits could all have on safety glasses on at all times. just waiting for next year its gona be great

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Someone was smoking in the bathroom which set off the fire alarm. I felt so bad for team 501 because this is the most prestigious award you can win, and they were interupted in the middle of it. When we all came back in the building, hardly anyone was left to see them get their Chairmans Award. Congrats team 501 on winning the Chairmans Award.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

:D I agree with what was said earlier. The bass at the event was DEFINITELY WAY TOO LOUD. It was piercing my head and chest. They had two subwoofers that where each the size of my car. I also agree that there was too much security personnel. I was interrogated when I tried to walk over to a vending machine next to the machine shop. The Verizon Center security staff had little knowledge of the event and didn't realize that some people had to access certain areas of the arena. This was also true during eliminations, when there were little seats available on the playing field side of the curtain. Some people, who had no choice but to stand in the stairwells and entry doors, were harassed by Verizon security staff.

I also agree that the referrees definitely held their flags when it came to "intentional" ramming. Our robot was rammed repeatedly above very high on our robot when our scissor lift was up. This is clearly against the rules as teams are only allowed to hit "low" on robots. In one match, an unnamed team even place their arm between the scissors in our lift and prevented us from moving our lift. We repeatedly, yet politely, pointed this out to the referees over the course of the two days of competition. Unfortunately, no action was taken by the referees in any of the matches in question. I understand that the referees have a busy job and there is a lot that they have to watch, but a line does have to be drawn when it comes to ramming and striking other robots. The referees can't on one hand be quick when it comes to interference penalties and on the other hand turn a blind eye to robots intentionally hitting other robots high. This is especially true when the robots being attacked aren't even carrying tetras.

I was also wondering why teams weren't allowed to have their robots in the team photo, especially when we did last year. However, our team faculty advisor became extremely angry when he heard this and completely ignored the staff at the event. He forced his way through angry BAE volunteers to bring the robot to the photographers. You'll notice that on the BAE website our team is the only one with their robot in the picture.

On a lighter note, it was very funny when the fire alarm went off at the moment when Dean Kamen was announcing team 501 as the winner of the chairman's award. All of a sudden power to the video screen, lights, and microphone goes off and a siren starts going off. The building had to be evacuated. Dean seemed extremely annoyed when this happened. There were other issues as well, such as the leader board being inoperative throughout the first day, no one having success with the camera, and other minor problems.

Other than that, the BAE regional went along perfectly fine and without any problems. ;)

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

It might have been us (529, rectangular green box with an unused arm on top) Doing all the intentional ramming you're talking about. This is simply because Our engineers were lazy and didn't figure out how to make the arm retract (still haven't, actually), So we were forced to play defense. According to our driver, the 4 penalties we go that match was from us being bumped by another robot (into the robot in the loading zone), but I think it's just because he's never used a 1 joystick drive before, and slipped.

I agree that people were hitting each other way too hard though, because everything not entirely inside the lexan "armor" (including the armor itself) was beat to crap, and has to be replaced.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

As the winner of the safety award, I was rather disappointed with the standard trophy. I had been hoping for a giant bubble suit.

--Petey

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Wow.

Last time I checked, a big part of being a team is having all the team members take responsibility for the entire team. If a team member isn't pulling their weight, for whatever reason, then it is the responisibility of the entire team to pick up the slack and continue on. Successful teams - in almost any aspect of life (i.e. not just robotics) - don't make excuses and assign blame when something goes wrong. They improvise. They adapt. They overcome. They correct the problem and move on.

If something on your robot isn't working, then why don't you take the responsibility to fix it? Isn't that better than displaying such an amazing lack of respect for the engineers that support your team? Isn't that what being a TEAM is all about?

-dave

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

I want to thank everyone at the BAE regional for a great weekend. Also, congratulations to the first place teams and team 501 for their successes. Good luck to all still to compete, I hope to see you next year.

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First off i would like to thank teams 121 and 126 for giving us the oppuritunity to be part of thier alliance. You guys are awesome and i can't wait to get the chance to work with teams like you again.

anyway, all the pics that BAE systems took are avaliable at
http://www.baesystemsfirst.org/regional/gallery.htm

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

we're trying.

I wasn't intending to disrespect my teams engineers, it's just the way I talk. Something more appropriate, but meaning the same thing I meant would be along the lines of "We still haven't figured out how to retract our arm without having the cables foul, because of the fact that the extend and retract motors run at diferent speeds, The motor we use to extend (Van door) is limited to 1 per robot (as I understand it), and the motor we are trying to use to retract the arm doesn't have enough power to extend it. We're at the point of trying anything to make it work, Including the random suggestion of a system of pulleys and the retracting mechanism of a tape mesure to keep the cables taut while retracting."

I just wanted to explain why we were forced to play defense instead of offence, even though we have an arm that can cap a goal just fine. If we used the arm though, we stood a good chance of over balancing because we had no way to retract the 11 foot arm.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Whoever asked for the 121 pictures - one of the URI Mentors has a website with tons of pics from all throughout the build season check it out: http://www.joemenassa.com/Robotics05.html

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

God team 1027... I must say I was like praying to be in an alliance with you in the eliminations... I absolutely loved your robot... Great job...

As for the Regional... I wasn't really impressed to be honest... People said the music was way too loud but I thought it was perfect...

It took the life out of us when the security kept telling us to not make so much noise with our drums and horns so we were really really toned down...

We kept getting yelled at for standing in the aisles because our seats were like taken over and so we had half the student body of the team wondering around...

The food prices there were outrageous so we had to walk around the city to get food...

After half the team didn't have seats we would sit in the center where you are allowed if your team is up but once the match was over and before the score was up we were getting yelled at to move though some teams had members sitting there when their team wasn't even up or in the elimination matches...

The Refs to us were very inconsistant about calls and penalties and such but I don't want to turn this into anything bad... They do have a very tough job...

Of course we still had fun this competition... Some of the robots were amazing... Thank you to everyone who made it possible and see you at Chesapeak and Nationals!!!

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

First off, congratulations to the BAE finalists, champions, and award winners. This was my first time at the Manchester Regional and I really enjoyed it. We had a very successful run and wound up ranked 16/51, I think, but unfortunately didn't get into the playoffs. Anyways, here's some things I saw at this regional that might be helpful to teams at upcoming regionals:

-Penalties play a huge role in scoring. Early in the regional, teams were getting penalized for not visibly touching the loading triangles, but after a mad rush for "brightly colored zip ties," these penalty flags stopped flying as much. Human players also got better at keeping both feet in the triangles. One killer penalty that became important as more teams played aggresive defense was interfering with a robot at a loading zone...a 30 point penalty that can easily swing a match one way or another.

-Defense is huge. Alliances learned to dedicate one robot entirely to defense as the competition progressed. Defense is more aggressive this year too than I've seen. Many teams push the limit between "shoving" and "ramming" and of course several robots got flipped. Many of the playoff rounds had lower total scores than the qualifying rounds. Several low, fast, high-traction robots with only mediocre or semi-functional arms made it to the playoffs on the strength of their deadly defense (501 is the best example I can think of.)

-Stacking height was not as important as strategic positioning. Making rows seemed to be the priority, and as a result Tetras wound up spread pretty evenly over the goals. Most goals had only one or two Tetras and there was rarely more than 4 or 5 on any given goal.

-More alliances than I thought took advantage of 10-point parking. There is actually plenty of room for 3 robots in the end zone if they are in the right spots.

-If you can cap a vision tetra in autonomous, you will have the respect of everyone and are basically guaranteed a spot in the playoffs because not one team did it in all three days at BAE as far as I know. The most common autonomous was whacking the side tetras down, which despite being only one point at first often saved some effort in completing a row or two. Some teams capped non-vision tetras in autonomous as well.

Hope some of this is helpful. I can't wait to see some more regional action! Good luck everyone.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Pictures from the regional are at http://www.baesystemsfirst.org/regional/gallery.htmClick on "Teams" at the top for the team photos.

Oh, and add me to people who thought the music was WAY too loud. Of the 8 FIRST competitions I've been to, this was the first time I have needed earplugs in the pits because of the field music (and we were on the far side of the pits).

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Did anyone else notice that the fire alarm went off at 5:01?

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

First off, congratulations to all the BAE award winners.

Secondly, if you cannot figure it out, get help from other experienced teams. You will save a lot of time and resources. :)

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

I want to start off by congratulating all the teams that competed in New Hampshire this weekend, you really made the matches fun to watch. As I said last year, I think that instead of being subtracted from the robot committing a penalty, points should be added to the other alliance's score. I saw a lot of matches where the losing alliance had zero points due to penalties. This ends up hurting the winning alliance because it brings their raking points down. But if those points had been added to the other alliance's score, or even if the ranking points had been given based on the losing alliance's score before penalties, the winning alliance would have gotten credit for allowing the other alliance to score, and not gotten penalized for something that they had no control over.

FIRST had done a great job closing loopholes and making sure that everything is spelled out as specifically as possible. But to ensure consistency among refs and among regionals I think that there is one more thing that needs to be spelled out.
According to rule <G12>: And according to rule <G15>: These criteria are pretty obvious for the automatic loader, but somewhat ambiguous for the human player. Does anywhere off the pressure pad count as "close proximity" for the human player? Does the human player need to be in the loading zone with a tetra for the robot to count as "in the process of...receiving a tetra"?
Due to the fact that 2 of the 4 quarterfinals in New Hampshire this weekend went into a third match which was ultimately decided by the refs' interpretations of these 2 terms, and the fact that a 30-point penalty is almost a guaranteed loss, I think that these terms need to be spelled out as specifically as possible.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Here is a slightly off topic subject. Today I left a half-zip sweatshirt in the stands with my team and it seems to have magically disappeared sometime during the day. We were sitting in section 124, next to teams 58, 126, and 1073. If any of those teams, or anyone in general, has happened to see it would you please pm me? It says Buick Scramble on the front and Nike Golf on the left sleeve. Thanks!

-Tom

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

The penalty that cost our alliance 1276, 157 and 190 that match was bad. It was a close call. Depending on how you impliment the loading zone penatly it either could have been a penalty or could have not. I would have to say our final quarterfinalist match against 133 1519 and the other team was one of the best matches there. We even had the announcer confused. :D

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Yeah, me too. Really creepy.

And penalties are really a killer. I remember a couple of quarterfinal rounds that were decided on 30 point penalties.

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Congrats to all,

One major thing i noticed with this years game is that alliances mean everything. It seems to be near impossible to have one team carry an alliance this year. This was especially evident to me in the qualifiers. Many times you would see a good strong team end up with four or five matches where the alliances struggled because they had two weaker robots with them. Just somethings i noticed.

-Pat

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Penalties killed our team too!!!

We teamed up with Trinity and 501 but a penatly (30 pointer) allowed our opponets to move on.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Hi Everyone,

Yes. The alarm went off at 5:01, exactly when 501 won Chairman's. It's rather ironic since last year when we recieved our trophy for being the regional champions, the time was once again 5:01.

Thank you to all the teams who have congratulated us on winning Chairman's! We are still in shock.

And to team 166, 40, and 1027 - thank you so much for picking us as an alliance. We're sorry about the penalty. We are still trying to figure out when the penalty took place because our video guy filmed the whole match - and we can't find it! Oh well. Good luck in the future. You guys had really great robots.

~ Jill

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

I believe that it is a recommendation/rule that you really should common sense with the noise makers. FIRST uses the term obnoxious.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

hey you don't have to say that... 1037 had way more drums than us and they never got yelled at... FIRST is probably going to eventually just be a bunch of scouting all 3 days and no cheering at this rate...

thanks for calling us obnoxious too... we try...

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Did anyone notice that as soon as the fire alarm went off, two things happened. Team 501 was announced as the chairmans award, AND it was exactly 5:01 pm on the digital clocks in the arena.......

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Sorry. Well I wasn't actually calling you obnoxious. I was just trying to point of the fact that FIRST recomends restraint with noisemakers. I should have continued on and said that those rules are never enforced or enforced haphazardly. Also, were you outside the arena with the noisemakers. I know I got yelled at for just baning those plastic things when I went to get something to eat.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

No... We never took them from our seats... We have about 5 drums I believe and we have 4 different horns all different sizes but we only used them when we were up (and we only used them like once or twice a match)... It was terrible for us on saturday because all the parents came up and took all our seats so half the team had to wonder around the stadium with no seats and it seemed wherever we stopped they were all over us...

and the thing that annoyed me the most was the lady sitting in the center in a folding chair and kept yelling at us before our match would end for us to leave so other teams could sit there but right in front of me there were members of 133, 121, 126, who just played in the match before us and were still there (and yes she was yelling at us and not them)...

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

hey team 88!
i just wanted to say thanks for at least wanting us in your alliance...i was pulling for it. i told our controller right before we got picked that all we had to do was get past the fourth place seed picking and then we would get picked by you guys, but we ended up getting taken just before. thanks for playing some great matches both with and against us!

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Yes yes... another great team we were hoping to be with... 549... Great robot and great team members... I love the hair haha though we were thinking of holding you down and using some spray painting hair dye and writing 88 on both sides... hahaha

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

we actually thought of telling our sponsors whoever gave the biggest donation would get their name on the sides, or we would put our team number. you guys probably could have...i'm very weak, with very little muscle :D

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

To Team Discovery - It was great neighboring with you at the BAE regional. Best wishes for your team going forward..and the students I talked to about ways to mentor Lego League...team 501 can help you with a plan to make the "Would benefit from additional emphasis" on the Chairman's Award Feedback Form become "Currently Strong"!
M

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

The reffing was UNBELIEVABLE (as the announcer would say). Benji and his crew were on top of things all day and it showed. I only heard booing once from a team with a high cg that fell over, and they were upset the other alliance was not DQed.

The music was loud on the field, but not over the top. The music and lights before the finals set the mood for an exciting bunch of matches. I would like to thank team 126 for their great scouting, human player, and machine. 350 also gets my thanks for being a great defense and teamwork. Our alliance worked like a well oiled machine and without our teamwork the outcome may have been different.

Their were two volunteers in particular that we always have fun with. The walk around match cuer and the woman who gave out the early stickers (see attachment). The announcer was great again, and the music was too. These are the people that give the BAE regional the atmosphere that we will continue to enjoy for years to come.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

I have searched everywhere can someone plz post the Top 8 seeds along with who they picked for the elimination rounds. Would be much appreciated for those wonderful College students who are enemic in their thrist for FIRST.

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I would like to thank Team 121 for choosing Team 126 for the elimination rounds. Team 121 did a great job scoring and keeping robots off of us while we scored. Also, Team 350 did a great job defending for us. Our three teams worked excellent together and did a great job adapting to the action on the field. Good luck at the Championship!

You can find all of the teams that made it to the elimination rounds on
www.gaelforce126.org (under the BAE regional link).

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A big thank you to teams 121 and 126 we all really appreciated the opportunity to play with you. We were drooling over your bots during the days of competition and we ecstatic to be chosen after a hard start on Thursday. We are hoping to make it to competitions this year but in any case we are just so happy to be champs after our 2nd consecutive year due to money issues. Thank you again. We all really enjoyed it.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

As one of the coaches of Team 1519, I definitely agree that the quarterfinal match you mention was one of the most amazing of the day. (BTW, the other team on the alliance was 1153, the number two seed.) It seemed like the lead/momentum went back and forth at least four times during the match.

We were very surprised at the importance of strong defense. By Saturday morning, most alliances had realized the importance of having a robot playing defense, as in the qualification rounds it wasn't unusual for an alliance with one good stacker and one strong defender to win over alliances with two strong stackers.

Since we were way behind on the robot build schedule, we didn't have a stacking capability until Saturday morning. As a result, on Friday we had not attempted to stack, but instead played defense almost all day. We were amazed at the number of top teams that aggressively scouted our robot on Friday night as a defensive ally. As a result, on Saturday morning we continued to focus on defense to demonstrate our capabilities there even though we had a new stacking capability. We found that one quick defending robot could generally keep two good stackers from making much progress. After dropping the hanging tetra in autonomous mode, Team 1519's robot was on the field solely for defense and our robot took an awful lot of battle damage as a result. Being in the opponent's zone as a defender against two or three other robots resulted in mangling a couple frame rails on the robot such that they will surely never be straight again. The elimination matches had a surprising amount of "brutality," but it sure made for exciting play.

We are disappointed that our rookie competition season is now at a close, but we're looking forward to offseason competitions, as well as next year! Thanks to all the teams that gave our rookie team advice and suggestions during the tournament!

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

yes, i agree with what was said before, the woman giving out early stickers was awesome!!! She was a lot of fun to talk to, and plus, i danced with her a bit lol :)

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

I just wanted to say that BAE was a great event and i had lots of fun. I also want to thank team 126 and team 350 for being such great alliance partners. You guys did a great job and we couldn't have done it without you. Thanks again.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Overall I think it was a good regional, I thought the whole 3 Vs 3 thing would make things very difficult in the queuing area but it was handled very well. We had a little trouble with the interpretation of the rules (penalties) but adapted and overcame our troubles in our first few matches. I am looking forward to Chesapeake because we now know how we play the game we know what rules and penalties the judges and refs are looking for.

Finally I would like to thank team 157 the Aztechs for their support in cheering for us. THANK YOU!!

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

I'll agree with this- Benji was amazing!

Case in point- it was a match early into the seeding rounds, I forgot the round number. A robot grabbed a tetra and ended up falling out of bounds. Their arm resting on the floor on the outside of the field. But they weren't disabled so the team righted the robot by applying force to the floor on the outside of the field with their arm. Once they were back up and driving to the loading zone you could hear gasps from the crowd. Benji was on the opposite side of the field as the arena control system. He risked life and limb by jumping over the wall and through the field to get to the arena controllers. By that point the illegal robot was just about to cap a tetra on a goal when they were disabled. Because of Benji's heroics that match avoided a serious reffing blunder. Awesome job :D

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Ricksta of RhodeWarriors:

We had a complaint when our robot was disqualified for an offense that our human player did not commit--namely, touching the robot as he loaded it. It is quite clear, on tape, that the infringement the referee alleged did not occur.

So I wouldn't say it was flawless refereeing--I'd also note that there were some extraordinary discrepencies in penalties about ramming robots--but it was good.

--Petey

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Petey,

the more and more i read, the more and more you continue to bash referees. I myself am a referee, and let me tell you however easy you think it is take that and multiply it by 10000 times harder. It is as i quote "the hardedst working people there". yes, we do sometimes make "bad calls" but no matter what, the final say is made. So stop griping about it, and move on, and next year maybe try and not get those penalties.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

No one, and I mean NO ONE, who has umpired a Little League baseball game would ever criticize you or any other competitive official (except maybe certain Olympic figure skating judges :)). My hard hat is off to you.

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

i would just like to let every one know that once again the BAE regional competition was amazing...i watched some incredible bots and some incredible matches...as a member of team #350 i would just like to thatnk teams 121 and 126. you guys are the only reason we made it as far as we did and i am most grateful that you gave us the opportunity with all the other amazing bots that were there...congrats to you and to all the finalist and even to those who weren't in the finals becasue it was a success to even make it to the cometition. 350 went from shipping a bot with no arm to a first place win with 2 great teams that i hope we get to work with again. and yet again i was amazed at the support there was from the other teams there...thank you to anyone that helped us...especially with pullie, cuzgod knows we used alot of them. i hope all the future regionals go well for everyone and i hope to see you at nationals!!! :D

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

Greg and Rick--

As an ex-Little League umpire, I think I can say I understand the difficulty.

I have not bashed any referees. I have merely stated my opinion that the reffing was not without fault. This is to be expected. In my viewpoint, it was an exemplary reffing performance. Any other opinion that you may attribute to me is quite mistaken.

As for the penalties: once again, we find that it is extraordinarily improper to express an opinion that does not agree, to the letter, with F.I.R.S.T. Apparently, it is not enough to merely respect and like the people at F.I.R.S.T.: we must agree with them in every aspect of every game as well.

--Petey

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

I certainly have nothing to complain about when it comes to the refereeing. It must be so hard to do that job. Everyone has mistakes they wished they hadn't made or penalties that were called that they didn't see. For example, many of you probably remember in one of our last seeding matches (I am from team Buzz 175) our robot was tipped but was able to self-right. However we were called on that 30 point penalty (I think it was the first or at least one of the first 30 point penalties of the whole competition) and we ended up loosing that match. It was really crushing, but we all realized that the refs did their job. We wish it hadn't happened, but we still ended up doing very well.

It seemed to me as if there were a lot more penalties at BAE than there were at Chesapeake bay (the other regional my team attended) I think that it was partially due to the rule changes. At Chesapeake it seemed like it was less advantageous to have a defensive robot on your alliance than it was at BAE where defensive robots played a big part.

As far as all the security goes, we were seated right behind TJ2, and once all the parents came from both teams, I know we certainly felt squeezed in. It was really difficult that every time one of us so much as touched the aisle we were being yelled at. However, my team (because of me) ended up appreciating that. When we were in the front cheering for our team in our last quarter final match, I started getting really dizzy and I was hyperventilating (I have seizures) but my team couldn't get back to any of our mentors because of the congestion. I ended up having to leave with the EMTs who had a trouble getting in and getting me out. Now I know that is an extreme situation, but at that time we appreciated why the security personnel were always yelling at us.

I would like to thank teams 138 and 58 we formed at great alliance. You guys were really awesome!

Sorry that I am do long-winded! :)

Re: BAE FINAL REMARKS
 

unfortunately, the only pictures of 138 you are going to see are ones in the matches. other than that, we closely guard pictures of the robot stripped down in the pits as the steering system is located right at the top of the 'bot and we haven't gotten a patent for it yet as we wish to do. :(