Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

Sorry for the negative connotation in the title. We just got back from the Philadelphia Regional. Overall we had a great time. Congratulations to the winners. (365, 316, 56) You were a powerhouse alliance, and absolutely deserved to win. We were honored to be on the field with you.

We apologize for tipping 56 in the finals. We inadvertently cheated everyone out of exciting third match. I just want to make sure that no one thinks that we did it purposely. We would have much preferred to keep them upright so that the matches could have been settled on the field rather than in the judge’s huddle.

My disappointment comes from the feeling that the announcer and judges seemed to paint us as an overly aggressive team in the finals. I hope that everyone understands that that is not what we are about. We are an offensive robot. We rarely play defense.

In the qualifying matches our drivers always erred on the side of caution. Our motto is “It’s more fun when everyone plays.” Since we are not a “home town team” and not very well known at the Philly regional I am concerned about perpetuating this perceived image of extreme aggressiveness. I hope the teams that we played with and against can attest to the fact that we played our matches fairly, graciously, professionally and with integrity. We did not win the SBPLI Chairman’s Award by being a rouge team.

Thank you so much 293 for choosing us and 834 for playing with us. Sorry if we let you down.
The number of impressive robots at this competition was mind blowing. 103 was amazing!!!! 365 you are the whole package. We would be proud to be half the team that you are. The field was so deep with talent that many qualified robots unfortunately did not get to go to finals.

By the way, I am not knocking the judges or announcer. I realize that you guys are volunteers. You are my heroes for making the commitment to students and to FIRST. There are not many people in this world that could or would do the job you do.

I was, by far, most proud of our students who, while noticing that a lot of pinning, bumping grinding and tipping went unnoticed in other matches, often against us, handled the disappointment of being disqualified with dignity.

Respectfully,
Ken Tiu
Team 358

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

Ken, believe it ot not, Team 365 knows how disappointed you are. Two weeks ago, we lost the Pittsburgh Championship on an identical DQ. Our alliance was DQ'd for unintentionally tipping another robot. It indeed leaves an empty feeling when an unintended and unexpected result decides a match.

Anyone who believes that Team 358 was "extremely aggressive" wasn't watching the competition. Your robot was one of the best there, a fast, capable capper with an intelligent, experienced driver who played the game cleanly every time out -- including the one unfortunate call in the finals. After studying the scouting sheets Friday evening, we knew that if you weren't picking teams, you would be picked early for playoffs. You have a high quality team, and it has been fun to visit and compete with you. We hope you are able to come back to Philly next year and keep this Regional one of the highest competitive Regionals FIRST has.

If the announcer seemed to emphasize that aggressive play would not be tolerated, he certainly did not mean that to be personally directed to you or your team. Ron Partridge is one of FIRST's best announcers, and he is just as disappointed that a match has to be decided on such calls as you are. If you ever get the opportunity to meet him (Championships), please do. You will find he is one of the nicest people you have ever met. Ron also is responsive to making changes to how he calls the games. A few years back someone pointed out to him a comment that he made announcing that reflected negatively on a team. When he realized how his comments could be misunderstood, he changed the way he made those calls so that they would not be offensive to the team. He cares very much about FIRST and also about the teams at his competitions, and he would not say anything that would bring discredit to any team.

Good Luck at Championships, it would be fun if we were in the same division, but I think our Team numbers may be too close to allow that. I'll have to check out Koko Ed's latest update of the possible divisional breakdown and see.

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

Hey you guys, I'm from the Philly area and believe me, our team doesn't think anything of you besides your an awesome team! and you should at least be happy you made it that far! my whole team was so into it, more than when we played! So i think you guys did awesome, and that your always be winners in my book. sorry at 6 am in the morning, I'm to lazy to think of anything more. Hope to hear from you guys, and good luck at nationals! Oh yeah 358, thanks for playing frisbee with us during lunch, the unofficial frisbee team at my school likes to verse us so we're having a giant match coming up in April, if you care to join us let us know, you guys gave a giant slap to the player's face, hah they actually thought they were good lol

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

I'm from Team 56 and I think you guys had a great team. You were clearly one of the best offensive robots in Philly. I thought your team was playing good, clean defense when you tipped us over. From my point of view you were not overly aggressive and I think the judges over reacted.

I also know how you feel, we were eliminated the previous week in the NJ Regional on a controversial decision.

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

You have nothing to apologize for. You played the finals and every other match with great class. And without your robot, we probably would have never made it to the finals in the first place.

To Robbe: If we had to lose to anyone there, then we are glad it was you. After getting hosed at Trenton, you guys really deserved to win a regional. I only wish you didn't do it at our expense.

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

Team 358 has every reason to hold your heads high and take pride in a great showing in Philadelphia. You played a clean and consistent offensive game throughout the competition and your alliance earned your place in the finals.

Your strategy in the semis, where you out-scored our alliance (#1 seeded 1184, always strong 484, and ourselves) to take the win in two rounds showed that you knew how to play the game fairly. From the scores (62-33 & 73-19), I think everyone can see that your alliance's strategy was to win by scoring tetras, not defending against us. This could have been a risky strategy against 103, and no one would have blamed you for assigning a robot to block us, but you let the game go as intended. We salute you.

In my opinion, the event with Robbe in the finals was a normal part of FIRST competition - not aggressive defense. However, the referees in Philadelphia chose to take a very literal interpretation of G25 - even penalizing Team 56 when, during seeding, another robot tipped over after running into them. Though I personally disagree with some of their calls, I also know refereeing is a tough, thankless, job, with little opportunity for rest throughout the event. And, with six robots on the field, they certainly have their work cut out for them!

If FIRST is looking for a take-home message this year, I think it is that they need to be more specific in the rules covering robot contact and to ensure that the referees receive the guidance and training needed to administer the rules consistently and fairly.

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

I aplaud all of the teams at Philly for seeing through the "unnecessary roughness" call to see that our team was not the brute that the finals made us out to be, but the fast and agile capper we like to be. Although I would have liked to loose by the score and not by the refs, the finals were exciteing in their own way.

I hope to see all you at Atlanta!

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

You are not just half the team we are, you are right with us, I can only think of 2 teams that won a Regional and a Chairmans at the same event this year, 358 and 365.
The best of luck to your amazing team and I can't wait to see you guys at Nats.

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

That means a lot to us coming from you. Thanks.

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

Thanks for all your kind words. Hopefully we'll see you all at Nationals (and so far it seems as if we're next to MOE - last time I checked at least). Or if not, perhaps a different regional next year. :)

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

First, I'd just like to state that it is a rare occasion I login to post, however I'm always reading the boards. There are few times I feel my input would be of benefit, but being a driver for team 365, as well as a member often found in the pit, I'd like to put my input in on team 358.

I could sit here and tell you all the wonderful aspects of team 358, but I'd prefer to sum it up in one line. Simply put, Team 358 is awesome.

I know all too well what it feels like to lose the finals due to a disqualification. But team 358 has nothing to be ashamed of. Your group is an awesome bunch, and have nothing to be ashamed of or upset about. You had a great robot, and second place is an awesome feat.

When our teammate was called for tipping, which was on a low shot, without lifting the robot (This was were the discrepency between our call and your call differed. While yours was unintentional, it was a high hit. None of us believed your hit was intentional, but according to the rules, a high hit which results in a tipped robot is grounds for DQ'ing the alliance), it was hard to swallow the loss without getting upset with the refs. I was the alliance captain, and when they came over for an explanation I simply told them, ''It was your call to make, and I can't dispute it as I did not see it from your viewpoint." It's not easy being a ref, and they're never sure what was intentional and what wasn't.

So thanks to all the teams there... we had a blast.

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

I didn't get a chance to pay much attention to the rounds, I was either in the pits, driving, or absolutely wiped out, but I did notice the finals. That call definitely did smell. I would think that for something like that if the alliance that 56 was on protested it, they could do something about it.

The thing that shocked me was that during one of the qualifying matches we knocked over the team with the scissor lift, (forgot the team number :-/ ) but we didn't touch them. They were trying to cap the center goal, and the tetra was just dangling there, we tried to snag it from them, and as we got out hook on it, we both backed up and they started to go over. They ran onto the side goal and that finished them off. I was expecting to get called on that one. But there was no penalty. I asked the head ref if there was a penalty, and he said it was determined that we had gotten entangled and we were both backing off, and they fell over in the process. So no penalty. That was a shocker there. I was just hoping to get the tetra away from them, not knock them over.

The penalties and disqualifications this year are definitely something that plays a major role. I'm glad that we didn't get any penalties at Philly. The announcer got us mixed up with one of our teammates in one match, but we didn't get a penalty. I was happy about that.

Good luck to those going to nationals

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

Hey 358! You guys were great on and off the field. Don't worry about a bad image because no one (hopefully) believes that you guys were being malicious. Good Job! hope to see you guys next year. Thanks for that game during lunch! (Maybe we could get a rematch in :D )

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

Thanks for the compliments. We're happy with how well we did, just disappointed in the way we lost.

I don't want a big discussion on this, but your information is slightly wrong, we hit 56 with the back of our robot, we hit them with our frame, not our arm. It was a low hit, not a high one. I just want to clarify that. The penalty was on "rough play", not tipping them over or hitting up high.

I realize how hard it is to be a referee - I ref soccer games every weekend during the spring and fall - and I understand why they made the call, but what really bothered me and the other drivers was how long it took to make the call and the actual rule saying that the officials look at our intention - it should be a concrete rule (like the loading zone one - no matter what if you hit them in the loading zone its a 30 point penalty - whether you meant to or not). The volunteers do a great job and try to make it as fair as possible, good job guys.

Re: Extreme disappointment Philadelphia edition
 

Just as my teamate has just stated the hit was low. In fact it was at low as possible, about an inch off the ground. To further this I was backing up into them, putting our arm on the complete opposite side of the robot (our arm does not rotate to the back). If the call was for high hitting and it was actually true I would have had no problem with the call, but a frame to frame pushing match should never end in a DQ.