[Kevin Kolodziej]

***I want to preface this by saying that I am not complaining, whining, or angry about this. What's done is done and I am not asking for any mistakes to be corrected. I am merely pointing this out as an example of how what I consider to be an obvious error had a significant impact on the event. I just want to see things like this be prevented as much as possible in the remaining events this year.***

Match 53 turned out to be a terrific battle with 269, 525, and 1675 vs 71, 92, and 970. At that time, 71 was ranked 2nd and 269 was ranked 3rd. During the course of the match, tetras were being stacked in rapid succession and everyone was doing very well (except for us - our tetras fell on our hook and prevented us from scoring ). The final score ended up being 34-37 in favor of blue, pushing 71 into the #1 seed.

Towards the end of the match, 269 and 71 got in a bit of a pushing war and 71 ended up on their back (no call was made, and from the video on Soap, based on my ref experience last week, I would not have called a high hit or intentional tip either). While this was happening, the far (from the audience) middle goal had a red-blue-red stack on it. One of the blue teams went up to cap a blue tetra on top of the red, but couldn't quite get it and descored the red tetra in the process (it was still hanging but was off to the side...unseated). At the end of the match, I noticed the red tetra hanging and realized that we should have gone over there and pushed it up to cap that goal and take away the middle row from blue to get the win. I asked my fellow coaches for that match if they knew how long that tetra was hanging there and the consensus was for about 30 seconds. Unfortunately, none of us saw the descore, which actually happened with about 10 seconds remaining. Apparently, NONE of the refs (despite two standing next to the goal) saw it either. With this descore, the final score SHOULD have been 37-27 in favor of red.

I recalculated the final average points for each team involved in that match and redid the rankings based on the results of that match and assumed that EVERYTHING else that happened before and after that match stayed the same. Here are the top 16 (with actual ranking in parenthesis):

1. 269 (3)
2. 111
3. 71 (1)
4. 383
5. 648
6. 45
7. 9
8. 970 (13)
9. 1646 (8)
10. 79 (9)
11. 903 (10)
12. 74 (11)
13. 525 (17)
14. 108 (12)
15. 81 (14)
16. 1675 (24)
(unfortunately 92 would have actually fallen from 29 to 33)

The only reason I point this particular instance out is because it wasn't a judgment call that some people may or may not disagree with - it was an obvious rule infraction that was missed. The video on SOAP doesn't show the actual descore because, like I said, it occured during 71's fall...but if you watch before that, you'll see the far middle goal have red-blue-red and blue trying to cap, then the fall, then you can see that same goal having red-blue-unseated red. I have video from another viewpoint that shows the actual descore.

Again, the fact that this occured doesn't matter - nothing can be done about it and that is fine with me. The referee's decision IS final. Having been a referee, I know that when something big happens, you want to watch it. But if you are a referee, you must resist that urge to watch if it is not in your designated area to watch, unless there is nothing going on in your area. I don't know if the refs at Midwest had assigned areas, but that is how we did it at Boilermaker. It seemed to work fairly well.

Its constructive criticism...do with it what you want.

Kevin