[Veselin Kolev]

Ah yes.. I was at this regional. A lot of.. lets say... happened during this regional, and I think the whole 30 point penalty thing was just one of many.

Lots of teams got this penalty. I would say about 99% of them were fair (I might not have been watching for the last 1%) I think this is just very talked about because it may have been the deciding factor in the finals.

Personally, my team (Harker, 1072) lost to the bellermine alliance (254 22 980) fair and square by the rules, but I was rather "anoyed" to say the least. Our first round our robot did nothing. It didn't move. We got owned. The next round we won against bellermine. The last we lost, and were eliminated. I was furious that our robot did not move. Of course I could have jumped on the FIRST people and blamed them blindly for screwing up the radios or something, and we should get a rematch But... I didn't. Because in my opinion our alliances were neck and neck. Well, almost, seeing how they beat us. But I knew that stuff like this happens, and that whining about it will accomplish nothing. It is bad luck. I know that my team has recognition. We put up a good fight, and went down proud (better watch out at nationals, bell boys!)

My point is, the team 1097 alliance technically was beaten fairly by bellerman alliance. In my opinion the 30 point penalty was excessive. But the rule is set before the competition, its just like the motors we get or those wierd tetra things we have to stack... its just another part of the challenge. If students from the team 1097 alliance are feeling any emotion, it should be pride that they ALMOST won. Sure, it kindof sucks, but I recognize your three teams as having awesome robots. Just as awesome as the winner's robots.

If anything is to be done, it should be by the people in FIRST. I think they should take note of this excessively large penalty, and try to avoid this problem next year.