Hi all,
Yes, it was a disaster.
Yes, it was heart-braking for most (except for 2630, maybe...
).
Yes, it was extremely "unfair".
Yes, a few (way fewer than what the general impression is on this thread) lost their calm and did not behave up to the FIRST spirit.
B - U - T :
I watched the young students, parents and mentors, mainly on our team, and observed -
99.9% of the thousands of participants of the 55 teams (largest regional outside North America) had the fun of their lives - even when crying their hearts out (which my daughter did when we lost the semifinals).
The kids were true heroes, struggling to the very end (mostly - to the bitter end), never losing hope, never complaining, always striving to overcome the enormous difficulties (way beyond their ability to control), using the long breaks to keep improving their robot (!), demonstrating what Vince Lombardi really meant by: "...my teams never lose, it's just that sometimes they run out of time before they win...".
All this happened while really co-operating, giving a hand to each other: our own experiences - volunteers from our team worked for hours to help alleviate the comm problems - instead of sleeping or fixing their own robot, while on the receiving end, when our team's Classmate broke, one of the Californian teams (1836 - God bless them
) offered us their own computer until ours was fixed!
I felt very proud when, after a game that was reset numerous times, including the "food incident", then waiting for an hour and a half for decisions, hearing that another team had been eliminated by the judges, the young students of our team immediately petitioned to pardon the other team, although our team was the one hurt at this incident, and although the other team was one of the strongest of this regional - the kids saying: "we don't want to win this way - we want to beat them on the field, lose on the field or team with them - but fair and square".
And, finally - after losing the semifinals in the most heartbreaking way (apart for the other semifinal coin-toss
), when our team's robot remained the single active robot of the alliance, trying to stop 2630's fearsome scoring-machine single-handed (literally) from setting a new scoring record, the kids stood up and gave their field team a standing ovation...
Sorry - what was that again about "FIRST cannot succeed in Israel"? Guess I misread one of the posts here...
Thumbs up for e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e in the Israel regional, be very proud of what you achieved this year, tomorrow's another day - and we'll be back for 2011: next year we won't run out of time before winning...
