[archiver]

Posted by Roly Anderson at 03/20/2001 8:55 AM EST


Engineer on team #188, Blizzard, from Woburn Collegiate and Ontario Power Generation.



I watched all the matches at the West Michigan regional and noticed that approximately 8 or 10 times that the bridge came off the fulcrum. From my vantage point, I could NOT determine why it happens.
Dean was there, right in front of the bridge, when it came off as the announcer was saying "The bridge has come off its fulcrum again, I don't know if they will be able to balance it"

In my opinion, in the interest of fairness and a better game, FIRST should (as gracious professionals themselves), do one of two things:

1. Fix the bridges, by increasing the size of the L channel, so the bridge cannot come off. or......

2. Stop the match when it happens and replay the match, or at the very least, stop the clock and put the bridge back on and finish the game. After all, the referees don't appear to be real busy "refereeing" or watching for infractions of the rules this year, and could watch for that.

Another thing:
When dividing up the teams for the divisions at nationals, I think FIRST should split up the teams equally between the divisions according to their experience, as follows:
Lets say for example that there are 100 teams with 3 years as a registered first team, 25 would be in each division. If there are 120 rookie teams, then put 30 in each division etc. They could even indicate on the divisional team lists, how many years experience each team has!

Comments?

BTW, thanks to Colleen T190 for all her sensible, logical, intelligent posts on this forum, it was from reading her posts that I decided to write on this forum, rather than just read it!

Tomorrow, the first (i.e. original) FIRST Canadian team heads off to Ypsilanti to participate in the Great Lakes Regional, see you all there!!