Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

Agreed. MORT played like champs and have a great robot. We have great respect for them and they were at the top of our pick list. This year more than ever before one little thing going wrong in a match cankill the whole tournament. Such is the luck of First teams

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

Thanks for taking all these videos and photos.
I can prove to my wife that I spent the weekend there. :)

Congratulations to Blue Cheese for a well deserved Chairman's award, and special thanks for all the support they provided Team 2402 throughout this season. Mentors and students made an hour and a half round-trip drive to Fredericksburg throughout the build to help with design/build as well as the team Chairman's presentation.

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

Sorry that you are letting some unfortunate events keep you from enjoying such a great weekend. There was so much more going on during those three days than the 30 minutes or so your robot was on the field.

Good luck to you in St. Louis.

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

Having attended many many events with Lisa as a head ref, she is one of the better refs I have witnessed. She's generally fair and consistent with her rulings. I find it a little distressing to see so much discussion of referee decisions, in generally what seems to be a negative light, in this thread. Even so far as one team declaring they won't be returning because of it.

Please, try and be objective. One side or the other is always going to be upset about a referee's decision. Don't make rash decisions and posts based out of emotion.

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

pssst, GSR! ;)

Congrats to 1058 on getting everything working for Virginia! I really hope you guys can make it to St. Louis somehow! Getting calls while in Boston for scores/results/strategy was fun and at least you guys didn't go down without a fight. Hopefully next time you can keep everything working for elims! ;)

Congrats to 25, 1676, and 1522 for taking it all in such a tough event!

Even bigger congrats to team 1086 on their Chairmans win! :)

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

Agreed. I had the pleasure of meeting Lisa over the weekend and she was incredibly fair.

There were some issues with the sensors on the minibot towers, but referees and scorekeepers are not allowed to give points for those simply because they saw a minibot go up. I, along with others, were talking to Lisa about this after the competition and she, too, agreed that it was incredibly unfortunate and somewhat frustrating that field issues were keeping teams from being awarded the points. Again, however, that falls outside of the referees' jurisdiction/purview and they really can't do anything about. I really hope people will take notice of that before pointing a finger at those staffing the competition. If it really is an issue, perhaps talking to the FTA about it would be more effective, since they are in charge of the functioning of the actual field, though I'm not sure how much they'd be able to fix it, either. It seems that some fields certainly work better than others this year, though.

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

Meh, there seemed to be a problem with Red's Right minibot tower. Something about it was out of whack -- we could deploy our primary minibot on the other 3 towers fine (once we figured out a bad limit switch issue), but the 3 times we were on that tower (including the 2nd Finals match), the minibot didn't quite stick, or make it far enough, or ... something. Alignment was fine due to a nice 'V', and distance bot-to-base was verified ok too. 2363's minibot had a couple of issues with it too.

Ref calls with Lisa have always been fair to the letter of the rule in the 6 years we've played on her fields, and 1885 has been on both sides of them too. She even invoked rule <T06> for "egregious [unsportsmanlike] behavior" at the elims driver meeting to prevent human players from 'sniping' tubes off of opponents' robots. We asked her about her decision since "Unsportsmanlike" is subjective in any case and there's a Q&A post on that specific issue stating it's not prohibited under the game rules (and tube-sniping isn't unsportsmanlike in some opinions so long as the robot isn't damaged). However, it's still a fair ruling under her wording since <T06> is the Head Ref's discretion.

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

On slightly different note:

I know I passed many of you CD'ers in the pits, stands and/or Queuing and I had no idea who you were. Maybe next year we all need to where "AKA" badges or something so I can start putting faces/people with these handles.

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

That's a good idea. I think I'll do that next year. I'm also thinking about going to more than just the VCU Regional; if I can get more time off maybe I'll go to the Chesapeake Regional too (probably can't go to the DC one).

Also, on another note, I'll end my recent rash of picture gallery spam and announce that my photos from Saturday are now up on my Flickr page. There's not as many because I wasn't there for nearly as long (too much pain from Friday!), but what's there is still pretty good.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coredes...453593/detail/

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

Perhaps I'm stretching this a bit, but couldn't The Head Ref chose to overrule Team Update #18 under Tournament Rule <T04>?

Again, I may be stretching <T04> a bit, so please correct me if I am wrong.

I believe the Disappointment Coming From the 11 Crowd Stems from the fact that they triggered the tower successfully numerous other times, but somehow in the final match the tower did not Trigger. Based on 11's previous Deployments and Ascents, assuming that nothing on their minibot was changed, the Tower "Should Have" Triggered since they've done it so many times before - leading them to believe that there was some sort of issue with the tower or field system.

Their Disappointment is completely understandable, though bashing refs isn't the best way to work things out.

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

I looked for you a few times, but you weren't in the pit when I went by.
I think your team may have been sitting in the stands behind us during opening ceremonies on Friday.

The lead inspector for Long Island and I actually found it quite refreshing to be unknown in Richmond. At home people are usually looking for us for one reason or another, but neither of us know many people down here, other than the NJ teams.

Kate the FTA recognized me when my team had a problem on the field, but she had to ask why she knew me, because I was so out of place-400 miles from home and wearing a different team shirt threw her off. She knows me as a team leader from Hauppauge. I only had to say "Hauppauge" (pronouncing it correctly) and she made the connection. I need a haircut too... :)

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

Did the tower not trigger at all or was it disabled by the referee? The field crew tested the towers multiple times each day, directly after matches in which the tower did not trigger, and before scores for the match were displayed. The emcee even announced the tower tests to the audience a few times.

This is more than likely the same problem as other regionals where the tiny minibot contacts the bolt, but not the lexan, and therefore doesn't trigger the tower.

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

If you go bald, we may not recognize you for a few months... :p

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

It has to be a problem with the smaller minibots. My team's 7 lbs minibot went up both red polls and triggered them each time. in match 3 we triggered the same poll that didn't trigger the match before.

Re: 2011 Virginia Regional @VCU
 

The earlier response from 11 was a poor choice of wording. The refs followed the rules to the letter, and did nothing wrong. I personally didn't interact with the field staff at all, but heard great things about them. Our disappointment lies in the fact that we were having minibot issues earlier, and once we finally get everything working the field didn't register the hit. It's tough to see the students do everything in their power, and do everything right, only to lose due to something out of their control.

I've been told it's physically impossible for our minibot to contact the bolt, so at the moment I've got no idea why the minibot didn't register. That was the first time in two regionals the tower didn't trigger for us (15+ successful triggers).

Overall, it was a fun regional, we got to play with some old friends, see new friends again, and meet even more new friends. We are all chomping at the bit for another chance to compete, and can't wait to see you all again in St. Louis.

Congrats to 25, 1676, 1522 on the regional win. We had some great matches together, and regardless of the outcome, they were some of the most intense matches I've been a part of in a long time. I'd love to see some footage of our semi-final matches if anyone has it.

Also a big congrats to 2363 on the Woodie Flowers Finalist. You guys are an awesome team and it was great to see you guys again. Its a shame we didn't get to work together, but hopefully we'll get another chance in St. Louis.

There really were tons of great teams at the regional, I saw so many teams helping out others who were having problems I literally couldn't name them all if I tried. So thanks to all of you unsung heroes, making sure there were as many robots on the field as possible.