[Tom Schindler]

With reguard to the situation that Mike and others are talking about:

The teams had to tell me which robots were going on 4 minutes before their match started. Team 1474 told me that it was going to be buzz and another robot that was going in. I wrote this down, then went over to ask the 61 alliance which robots would be going in. The second both alliances told me what robots were going in, their decision was final.

In this particular situation, 61 did have the choice whether or not to allow the broken robot to be fixed, or to allow the other robot from buzz's alliance to go in place of buzz. But this was still a choice. If 61 had wanted to, they probably could have called their timeout and let buzz compete, but the chose not to. They could have had incredible sportsmanship, but they definitely were not poor sports by say no to the head ref's question.

That being said, there were several other instances of poor sportsmanship i overheard/witnessed, but the major one had to do with the attitudes and actions of team members after a critical decision by the reffign crew. The head referee's decision should never be mocked... the head referee has a very difficult job to do, especially in situations such as this one.

Besides these small problems, the professionalism shown by the competitors in boston was amazing. All of the teams i spoke to during the finals and qualifications were very courteous and seemed to be happy to be there.

Can't wait for beantown blitz II!

Tom Schindler