[ChuckDickerson]

On this note I would like to draw attention to the utter ciaos that FIRST caused while, in my opinion, being very un-GP themselves by attempting to "save seats" before the finals and award ceremony in the section directly in front of the awards platform. Our team did not go to the Championship but myself and 2 other mentors traveled to Atlanta just to watch and checkout what was going on in the pits. Just before lunch on Saturday we grabbed 3 seats on the very top row of the lower section just in front of the awards platform halfway between the Galileo and Einstein fields. After lunch "officials" (some looked like FIRST and/or arena people and later some were even GA State Police) cleared the stands in that section 3 SEPARATE TIMES of all teams in front of us. They were (I think) trying to save seats for the teams that were going to make it into the finals on Einstein or something but they just had absolutely no control of the situation. They never "roped off" the area with yellow tape to let people know not to sit there so people would come and sit and fill-up the section and then the "officials" would go through row by row telling everyone to get up and sit somewhere else. They did this 3 separate times! Teams would have been sitting there for quite a while and then have to move. I can specifically remember all of 340 and 1880 among the dozens of teams sitting in front of us that were forced to loose their seats. When the awards ceremony started the whole section was empty and then it was basically just a free for all again. It looked kind of stupid when Woodie started the ceremony and the whole section in front of him was empty. The whole section of the "good seats" then only partially filled throughout the ceremony and final rounds. I thought this was totally unfair to the teams that were in the seats who were told they had to leave for no real reason just so that other teams (who wound up being just anyone not just the Einstein teams) only partially filled the section. If FIRST would practice what they preach then this kind of ciaos wouldn't have happened. The seats should have been first come first served rather than first come first removed, second come second removed, third come third removed, fourth come oh well go ahead and sit because everything has started and we have this big hole we need to fill because it looks bad in the photos and cameras to have a bunch of empty seats in front of the awards platform. It sort of ruined the whole photo op for endless sea for multicolored team uniforms. Since the 3 of us were sitting on the very top row on the walking level we watched this whole debacle unfold over and over in front of us. I don't know who's idea it was to "try" to save that whole section but it didn't work out so well.