Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexa Stott
When I mentioned making a legitimate attempt to hang, I brought that up because there is almost certainly going to be some time that elapsed between when you extend and when you come into contact with the tower. Teams would go next to/in front of the tower then extend. For example, we would deploy our hanging mechanism, connect to the tower, then finish the hang. This resulted in maybe 1-2 seconds or so where we were not in direct contact with the tower. Many other teams may take a similar amount of time to properly align their mechanisms. Technically, if we are following the rule in its strictest interpretation, then yes, we and many other teams would have been penalised. The spirit of the rule, I believe, is to just make sure teams aren't deploying large mechanisms then driving all around willy nilly before the finale.
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And here we went to all the trouble of designing a system that fit inside the rules without any fuzziness or interpretation by the refs...
At any rate, I think you may be in for a shock at further regionals. The rules are pretty explicit that you need to be in contact with the tower to extend outside the normal configuration. Don't assume you can get away with it at another regional even if the refs let you get away with it last week. If you're extending before the finale and without contacting the tower, you have precisely no argument against a ref penalizing you for it. And giving you a yellow card.
So, I think it's a really good idea to just plan to obey the rules instead of depending on refs not calling them. That way, if the refs at your next event are stricter, you've still got a workable system.