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Originally Posted by edomus
Can you elaborate on what the situation was?
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Confusion reigned to say the least. As we have put together the story this is what happened. This is a re-construction because no one person was there the entire time.
When Team 330 was preparing to put our robot on the field for what we hoped would be the final match, the cable connecting the RC to the radio modem got snagged and the socket got torn out of the RC. As some team members went searching for our electrical and programming guys, others dragged the robot to the pit and somebody got a spare RC from FIRST. Meanwhile the field team was stalling on declaring a time out. Eventually we asked for our allowed six-minute time out.
Unfortunately, getting the robot back to the pit, swapping the RC, programming the new RC and getting back to the field took seven minutes. (pretty good since the last time took over an hour) The officials informed somebody in a blue shirt (our color) in our alliance that we were not to take the field because we were late. But that person never told those of us working on the robot. As the announcer was saying that our partner would have to go it alone, our robot came racing from behind the curtain. The crowd went wild and our guys said that even if somebody had tried to tell them to stay off of the field, they couldn't have heard them. The cheering was just too loud. So before the officials realized what was happening, the broken robot appeared on the field, obviously ready to play.
According to the rules, we could have been DQ'd and our robot immobilized for the match or even just removed. The head ref decided to give our opponents a choice. He could DQ us or they could waive the penalty and we would play the match. 498, 80 and 696 took the later course. As we heard it from the officials, there was by no means agreement within the teams on this and it was a really tough call. The really good calls are never easy. In this case I think they did the right thing, but maybe I'm a little prejudiced.
We played the match and our alliance won. I commented during the break between the Finals and the Awards Ceremony to some of our team that if we should win the Sportsmanship award, we'd have to give it back. There was general agreement on that. While we try to be really Good Sports and have won that award ourselves in the past, we have never been faced with such a choice.
At the awards ceremony, the judges announced that the Sportsmanship Award was being made to the Alliance of 498, 80 and 696. The place went completely nuts again, and rightly so. Obviously the judges had made a quick decision based on the outcome of the final match, but I cannot think of ANY better examples at that competition, or most others I have been to.
I have also heard through unofficial sources, that all three teams were offered slots at the Championship. I sure hope that rumor is true. Team 330 was pre-qualified this year, so the two slots we won in Arizona are up for grabs. I can't think of anyone I'd rather see them go to.
Three other people need special thanks for helping us. One is Dorothy Kam the long-suffering wife of our head electrical mentor. She showed up in the pit out of nowhere with the electrical notebook and dug out the wiring map for the RC. This was invaluable in getting the new RC wired correctly. (having everything labled helped too!). Another was Glenn from Team 60, who showed up at a run as soon as he heard we had a problem. While we didn't need what he could offer, it was also a great example of sportmanship in itself. Tony from IFI was also with us the entire time and helped us figure out why the new RC wasn't firing up. (A loose wire) We would have found it eventually, but it might have been minutes rather than seconds.