[PMGRACER]

Originally posted by Ed Sparks
It's lousey that my team is expected to go through all of this effort to "Inspire" by way of building a robot and competing in a contest only to be put out of it all by a "Body Slam".

What if the damage occurred due to some "Un-Gracious Professionalism". Am I expected to just forget about it and go home?

What if it's something that just unexpected, some part that shoulda but didn't. Am I expected to shrug my sholders and wait for two years to go to Nat's? Would FIRST give me my money back for the events I could not attend? Will FIRST get a gaggle of lawyers knocking at the door to get those refunds?

Hmmm, soooo many questions.

I wouldn't come back at all, honestly.I just learned about First's latest ruling while surfing here on Awesome Delphi. This is extremely disappointing!! In the past 3 yrs. that I have done FIRST I have had to bail out our team and made repairs for other injured First teams on the spot and in between Competitions. I think First does not realize the complication and undue stress they're ruling will cause many teams this season. The roughness that is encouraged this year is unlike what I have seen in the past and will undoubtedly result in many "casulties of war".

I presume that if a team were knocked out of this years competition due to someone elses ungracious professionalism they probably won't return to First. I know if that happens to us I will not be returning to FIRST. Everyone on a FIRST team spends too many hours painstakingly designing, building and testing our machines to get blown out of play time. I am not very "inspired" to bust my rump if someone can detroy my machine and I am not given a fair chance to rebuild it to stay in competition. I really feel like I have made a good impression on a few young minds and hope to continue to do this thing called FIRST, however if bete noir rulings from the sanctioning body continue to appear I'll spend my precious time building extremely fast race cars and participate in our local OCCRA competitions!!!!!!!