[Alexander McGee]

Ok, I want everyone to realize something here. Statistically, the highest averages for regional events were around 130, give or take 25 points. Now, if you look at the regional event which I recently attended (AZ) you can see a HUGE difference in qualification point averages.

Rank 1 173 Average
Rank 2 135 Average
Rank 3 133 Average
Rank 4 121 Average

That's a difference of nearly 40 points, over a span of 11 matches per team. Come on people, its obvious that certain teams used (at this regional and others) so called "gentleman agreements" to raise their scores. This is definitely not in the spirit of what F.I.R.S.T. is all about.

As stated in a previous post on this forum, F.I.R.S.T. has declared this blatant act of cheating to be exactly what it is; cheating.

Here is a scenario for everyone.

Let’s say that I am a rookie team. I have, in my opinion, a wonderful robot. I worked very hard over 6 weeks with a group of students, parents, and teachers from my school, to make it all come together. When we get to our regional event, we lose our first match. We are upset, but we try again. Sadly, our team seeds dead last. In our 5th match of the first day of real competition, as our alliance and I are discussing how we can win, our opponents show up in our meeting. They say that they know how we can get at least 200 points. They claim that this is "working together", so we agree. The match ends, and we score 250 points. A somewhat mediocre alliance gets a significant amount of points, and a cheating team continues to manipulate the qualification points of every team.

Does this concept show how strong, well built, and well run a team is? NO. It shows how far a team is willing to go to make themselves look like something that they are not.

I strongly oppose “gentlemen’s agreements”, and think that it’s time for F.I.R.S.T. to know about it. I’m sure I will receive posts, emails, and IMs telling me that I am wrong.

Sorry guys, it’s cheating, not “working together”, so just stop it.