[shamuwong]

As a former driver myself, I can understand how 48's drivers continued to plow into 1114 until the arm broke off. The rack is rather hard to see through, especially with the ringers that were put on. I will not agree or disagree with any of Karthik's points, as I did not witness some of them myself. I was, however, standing right by the field, as part of the pit crew.

The greatest disappointment to me, however, was the incosistent or lack of refereeing on the Curie field. The 10 point penalty for aggressive play by 48 was only called after many complaints to the head referee, who blamed 1114's arm breaking on "poor design". And in the middle of our talking with the head referee, she left in order to ref the next match, effectively making any chance of a replay or change in the outcome impossible.

Say what you want about referees. Sure, they're volunteers. They can make mistakes. But every team that goes to nationals pays several thousand dollars on the robot itself, transportation, and entry fees, and countless hours of work and practice to get to Atlanta. To have it all squandered because of volunteers who don't know the rules and make inconsistent calls is absolutely ridiculous. I can appreciate their volunteering and all, but that doesn't make our complaints invalid. And then, to have the audacity of blaming the design of a robot in order to cover up for the fact that the head ref wasn't doing her job? I was stunned.

I have witnessed this too many times in Atlanta. In 2005, one of the volunteers working the autoloader stared at the field while one of our alliance partners waited for 20 seconds for them to load it. We were told to deal with it. In 2006, all three of the opposing alliance robots crossed the line to play defense, and no call was made. And now, this year, ringers weren't counted and destruction of robots was dealt with by a slap on the wrist, only after several complaints. It's no longer fun. It's just disappointing.