[R.C.]

Sorry for the late post,

Its taken me a while to write this. Before I start, I can't thank Team 254 enough. You guys are awesome and thank you so much for letting my kids go down with you guys. It meant the world to them. Also thank you to the teams that came by (971/1678/2135/846/604 etc..) You guys were the only reason the event was bearable. Thank you all who have posted/texted me supporting us, it means a ton to us.

This is exactly what happened.

Semi Match 1 our robot in auton ran into the wall. We've seen this happen before, basically we knew our encoder came unplugged. We didn't' call a timeout immediately because it seemed like a simple fix. At SVR it took 1-3 minutes to get just off the field. The second we got back into the pits the wires had came out of the 4 pin encoder. We ripped the timout card in half and gave it to our student who ran over to call a timeout. Thinking double timeouts, use one. Nothing else on our robot was broken except one darn encoder connector.

The student asked for a timeout twice and a poof mentor even asked him what he was asking for. It was a timeout. This was all very rushed because we didn't' want them to not except our timeout. The head ref acknowledged it was a timeout and said you got 6 minutes.

4-5 minutes later the head ref came over to our pit to ask what robot is being subbed out. We were all very very confused as we wanted a timeout. We've had this same situation happen when we took long to get back into the que line. So we just replied, No we are fine, we are in or something to the extent we are not being subbed out. There were 9 kids and about 4-5 kids that heard this same thing.

Once we finished we hustled into the que line and people were asking us why we subbed out? We at this point were just confused as we would never sub out unless our robot tore in half (a bit extreme I know). The head ref came over and started telling us that were taking advantage of the system and we asked for a backup. We immediately started telling him what happened. The head ref would not believe we said we did not want to be subbed out and we were in. Seriously? Can't believe 9 students and 4 different adult? You can make a mistake... After a bit of talking the head ref was fine with what happened and we went onto the field. The head ref said we were taking both timeouts and you are okay to go onto the field.

Once on the field someone behind the scoring table had called Frank or FIRST. The information was relayed to Frank and we were asked to remove our robot from play, which we did. Frank at FIRST made the call, unsure if Frank got all the information. We feel as he was told a distorted view.

I have been apart of FIRST for 9-10 years. I have never ever gone back to the pits crying along with students.

Over this past weekend, we have been harassed by inspectors for having 10-12 batteries charging in the pits and for "apparently" cheating by putting our blocker on and off even tho it was weighed in initially and demonstrated. The head LRI told the person re inspecting our robot to take their sweet time and as long as possible. <- What gives?

The refs missed an absurd amount of calls and we had to "educate" them how the rules worked. The best calls missed were the ones in front of them. We didn't' even get a field fault when two balls were on the field, apparently ref's didn't see it!

All we and the other alliance wanted was to play the match. I'm not upset that we lost to 254/971. We've lost to them countless times, but the fact we got removed and we didn't' have a chance to send our kids to champs.

There was no logic with this call, I said it numerous times this past weekend when I was frustrated with crappy volunteers. This isn't a powertrip time for adults, its a time to let kids learn and play matches. A kid made an honest mistake, he verbally communicated what he and the team wanted. Just because a stupid piece was paper was incorrectly handed does that mean we have to be subbed out?

This is pretty hard to swallow, we wont' be back at this event ever again and I'm sick of these awful rules and standards set by FIRST. How do you hold a kid to something when you can't even hold the adults responsible?