[Matt_Kaplan1902]

I had a great time at the Midwest Regional. I thought the venue was pretty nice and I met some cool people (Al and Courtney from 111, Andy and his drive team from 45, and DJ and his drive team from 1646 are just a few that come to mind right now).

However, as a couple people have stated the reffing was very inconsistent especially when it came to aggressive driving and high tipping. In match 47 we were backing out of our loading zone when team 970 ran into us and got caught in our cage, so our base driver Jimmy tried to drive forward to get loose but could not. So he pulled a turn and because 970 has a high center of gravity they tipped over. The head ref had us disabled because he said my arm swung around and hit them, which is impossible. We even showed him our robot showing that my arm is not on a turret and is incapable of moving around like that. Now in match 53 team 269 clearly has their arm raised up pushing against team 71 and caused them to tip over and they were not disabled. I don't know how they cant call that high-tipping.

There were also several instances of refs not paying attention as several times we saw robot getting hit in the loading zone and no penalty was called. Also in our second quarter finals round there was close to 10 seconds were we had to sit there because no tetra was loaded on to the loading zone.

The one call that had me going up the wall was in match 13 when our alliance partner was called for aggressive driving and received 20 penalty points. However when we asked for an explanation of the call the ref said "We called it against team 167 because they continually pushed against team 269 after the scored a tetra and they're is no longer a reason to play defense against them" I'm sorry but maybe they wanted to stop them from getting another tetra so they cant score. Also when we asked where this was in the rule book they had to call FIRST because they didn't know. It turns out that in update 15 and rule G25 which no where does team 167 violate that rule, and it also states that it is a 10 point penalty and the second offense is disablement. So them how is it possible to get 20 penalty points from that. The refs were severally mistaken in calling several aggressive penalties that effected the outcome of the whole regional.

However what in the past is done and I want to say congratulations to 71, 111, and 537 for winning the regional, 111 for winning Chairmans you guys defiantly deserve that one, Al for winning the Woodie Flowers Award, 79 for proving that us Floridians know how to play with the big boys of the Midwest and finally to team 1646 for picking us (After a 4 year drought of not making the eliminations).

Hope to see many of these teams down in Atlanta.