[dpasquariello]

When the game was revealed this year I felt that the excitement of going to the bar (last year) was absent. I realized, however, that there is a need to make significant changes from year to year.

Last year, I watched my son's Rookie team in Manchester, and luckily, in Atlanta. There was plenty of excitement - a robot lifting itself off the ground - wow!

This year I was a spectator at Manchester, and I mentored a Rookie team at UTC. There is excitement this year also, but it is much more dependent on the quality of the match-ups and the skill of the drive teams.

I feel the ease with which penalties are called in this year's game is a real problem. The field is so small that it makes it difficult for the referees to judge whether contact in the loading zone is incidental or intentional. The penalties are so severe, (since point totals tend to be low) that there is no way to know for sure who's winning until the final score is put up on the board.

I'm sure that some penalties occur because of the difficulty of the drivers to have a clear line of sight over the field. I thought that there was an inconsistency in the way penalties were called at the two competitions that I saw. I know that this is subject to rules interpretation by the judges, and they have a difficult job. Basically, I don't think that this year's game is an easy one to judge, and minor differences in interpretation seem to cause a big swing in match play results.

Having 6 'bots in play at once gives everybody more playing time, but the resulting chaos makes it more difficult to follow and therefore to enjoy.

I was also disappointed in how few teams were able to do significant damage in autonomous mode. I suppose that task difficulty can only really be assessed when the matches are played.

Can it be that the game is really secondary? It remains a vehicle for testing the abilities of the team. Our rookie group feels pretty good about the challenges that they met and what they learned along the way. Judging from the smiles, the levels of concentration, and the attitudes that they exhibited throughout the tournament, I think that the prime objective was achieved.