[Elgin Clock]

I would like to add to Conor's very detailed and accurate description of what happened.

While I would like nothing more than to say that we (237) were the ones responsible for the acts of GP you said we were responsible for, we were not.

271 was the alliance captain, and the call came from 271 to use our time out.

Also, I witnessed at least one of the announcements for all robots to return to the field, and one would think that this meant for all teams to be aware to turn their bots back on and be ready to play.

We had that happen to us in the finals, and the time outs never seem as long as they say they are for. When all else fails, work on your robot on the field. If it's workable, turn the sucker on, if it's not.. at least it's on the field for all the good it's worth.

I know we have gotten burned by this many times as well at other competitions, as we left our robot on at one during a time out, and the battery power died.

Also, yet again to dash all hopes of our team's GP, we were not "arguing relentlessly" for the refs to provide a rematch. In fact, the part we were worked up about was the fact that the match had a huge delay in the autonomous period, and the normal game play cause we thought the refs were going to go back on their word, and let 11 in and also let 1676 to come in and turn their bot on.

I'm sorry to say, but the refs call were hugely fair in this situation, and all of MM. Refs can never go back on their words, or else you will have a huge group of unhappy people. IN the spirit of reffing in general at MM I personally would of liked to see some ramming penalties called for autonomous, but if they did it for teams who rammed us, then they would have had to do it all competition.

Since they did not, it was a standard practice to let it happen. If you are going to call things as a ref in FIRST, you want to follow suit with the refs at MM, and either call things as penalties all day long, or let things slide all day long.

I know the situation that happened sucked for team 11, and their alliance, but we have all had things like us happen to us before.

"The refs decision are final" is the biggest thing you should take from a competition, and the manual when you read it no matter how much it may hurt your team, or your pride when you think they are singling you out to be unfair. Because they are not.