[petek]

Team 358 has every reason to hold your heads high and take pride in a great showing in Philadelphia. You played a clean and consistent offensive game throughout the competition and your alliance earned your place in the finals.

Your strategy in the semis, where you out-scored our alliance (#1 seeded 1184, always strong 484, and ourselves) to take the win in two rounds showed that you knew how to play the game fairly. From the scores (62-33 & 73-19), I think everyone can see that your alliance's strategy was to win by scoring tetras, not defending against us. This could have been a risky strategy against 103, and no one would have blamed you for assigning a robot to block us, but you let the game go as intended. We salute you.

In my opinion, the event with Robbe in the finals was a normal part of FIRST competition - not aggressive defense. However, the referees in Philadelphia chose to take a very literal interpretation of G25 - even penalizing Team 56 when, during seeding, another robot tipped over after running into them. Though I personally disagree with some of their calls, I also know refereeing is a tough, thankless, job, with little opportunity for rest throughout the event. And, with six robots on the field, they certainly have their work cut out for them!

If FIRST is looking for a take-home message this year, I think it is that they need to be more specific in the rules covering robot contact and to ensure that the referees receive the guidance and training needed to administer the rules consistently and fairly.