[Kevin Sevcik]

Ahem. Well, not to harp on things but a few final points, then I'll wander off for the day. First, the Courtesy section in the rules I quoted earlier, says that "friendly interaction" is allowed if all teams are willing. If you want to be discourteous or think FIRST can't suggest how you use your practice matches, well... fine. I'm pretty sure the "regular game play" means the field will be pretending it's an actual match. I don't think it's mandating that the teams do so.

Second, defending in a practice match still won't be anything like a normal match. If a robot doesn't want to be defended, they're not going to be working at competition levels. Even then, defenders aren't likely to have other robots running interference on them. I think practice matches are, by definition, not real matches.

Finally, teams are saying that they're okay with other teams asking not to be defended. Why can't you just assume that other teams don't want to be defended and then ask to see if they're okay with it? Assuming another team wants to be annoyed seems backwards to me. And annoying other teams seems like a bad idea.