Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
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I originally had a complaint drawn up, but I didn't want 1519 to get dragged down in that. Frankly, we were
shocked when you guys weren't "re-selected." According to our data, your robot/HP combination was in the top 10 for positive contributions to alliance scores.
I was told that 238 informed the scorer's table that the team rankings were incorrect. From across the way, it appeared that 121 may have been trying to do the same thing. Was someone closer to the scorer's table than I?
Overall, alliance selections were a trainwreck. Some picking teams and picked teams didn't know the rules of the draft, and it seemed like the scoring table didn't either. We got through them the first time. And then we all came back and did them again... I really didn't like this. While it didn't happen, what if a robot slipped through and someone stole them on the way back up. A team worth their salt wouldn't let it happen again. The scoring table should have had the up to date rankings. That's a pretty inexcusable error.
The play-by-play was not good. If you're going to use newbie play-by-play announcers, please,
please team them up with veteran announcers. Poor play-by-play really drags down the quality of the event, especially to the outsiders we're trying to impress.
Good play-by-play makes the regional sound like the exciting high-stakes high-energy competition it is, poor play-by-play makes it sound like some hokey high school thing.