[Ben Mitchell]

I didnt have a good time at the J&J regional. Teams saved entire rows of seats with paper flyers, and wouldn't let me sit down, forcing me to yell at them, so the three kids on my strategy team would have a place to put a laptop and watch matches.

The Rutgers people REFUSED to allow us to use a power outlet in the stand. There was a rack of about 16 power outlets, and they went unused all day, while my laptop could not use even one. They couldn't give me an answer why.

The referees, in our quarterfinal match, altered their definition of "intentional damage" to mean "Touching a disabled robot"

Our alliance versus our opponents in autonmous mode: We managed to cause one robot to flip itself, and another's battery fell out. We used the 1:45 to build a 120+ point round. The ref DQed us because our partner hit one of the disabled robots by accident, and ruled it as intentional damage.

Yet, no damage was done, and it was not intentional. This was after a regional full of the refs standing by, and watching robots smash eachother hard enough to shatter lights, for no reason other than to smash.

To be honest, I felt cheated by the J&J regional this year. It's really lost the spirit it once had. It was very combative, and from the moment the field director yelled at me for correcting his staffers (who told me I "had" to step on the pad") to the moment he told the head ref to DQ us, (that's right, it's my understanding that the refs didn't make the ruling) the atmostphere was very hostile.

If the FIRST regional coordinators read this: tell them to tell thier staff to lose the attitudes, read the rules, and apply the rules equally to all teams.