[angelc24]

I love FIRST. For over 8 years, I have been heavilly involved and have loved every moment of it. It has made me who I am today. This regional was the first time I have been upset at the way an official FIRST regional was run.

All yesterday and all today we were constantly having to replay matches 2 to 3 times. I want FIRST to make these regionals as fair as possible, and I do understand the need to replay matches with problems, but they were letting the match finish (when the loss of communciation happened 20 seconds into the match) and showing the score, before announcing that the match needed to be replayed.

As one of the teams who was 'de-allianced' in the second alliance pairings, we were all very upset. Our drivers were queing when they announced that there needed to be a second round of selection. We had kids who were crying in the stands. WE DO NOT BLAME THE TEAMS WHO WERE CHOSING FOR THIS. It is very upsetting to be on a team that was chosen for an alliance, to have worked out a strategy with these people, and then to have been told that you will not be competing again in that competition. The fact that the alliance selection had to be redone is almost unexcusable in my mind- it seems, to the observor, like a simple proofreading error.

I understand that there is a lot of stress going on for the scorers, the refs, the regional directors and everyone else involved with running that table, but it was just as stressful to be working as hard as you possibly could and to see everything taken out from under you, constantly

All in all, I love the teams in Manchester, I hope to compete with them again. Everyone was very friendly and helpful. I do hope that these problems will not occur again in the season, to others, because it was very upsetting to all of us to have to deal with them today.