[keehun]

Originally Posted by Karthik

You call countless communication issues, teams only being able to play three official qualifying matches, elimination rounds decided on a coin toss, food being thrown at competitors and the use of racial slurs to be a "minor hiccup"?

Ah. Wow. I didn't know there was food being thrown and a lot of negative action going on. While I meant "minor hiccup" as in FIRST's issues (not people's behavior) I guess what went down was pretty bad at the Israel Regional. Forgive the ignorance.

Originally Posted by Karthik

Gracious Professionalism is a two way street. 55 teams participated at the Israel Regional and from most descriptions, most of these teams handled the extreme adversity that was thrown at them with a lot of class. Despite the best efforts of the FIRST staff and local volunteers, the event sounds like it was a relative disaster. I'm not assigning blame here, but I'm just calling a spade a spade. The gracious and professional thing for FIRST to do is offer some sort of compensation or registration credit for all teams attending the event. Say I went to a restaurant and a water main blew, soaking myself and all the other customers. The graciously professional way for me to handle the situation would be to politely express my displeasure to the management and offer some help. The graciously professional response from the restaurant would be to refund my meal and offer me some sort of discount in the future. It's not something I would demand, but I sure would appreciate the olive branch.

You make a very good point. I will agree.

Originally Posted by Karthik

Teams spent six long and hard weeks preparing for this event. 31 teams at this event only played 3 official matches. That's six minutes and forty-five seconds of robot action. For some people, this will be the only experience of their FIRST careers. At the end of the day do you really think it's appropriate to pat them on the back and say "Sorry, there's nothing we can do. At least you learned something about dealing with adversity!".

I guess I wouldn't know what it feels like until I went through it myself. Karthik, thanks for all your words, really... I sincerely mean that.

Originally Posted by Karthik

One possible solution to reward these teams. Perhaps there could be an "unofficial, yet official" off-season event this summer, where teams would play Breakaway with all the pomp and circumstance of an official regional. To top things off, grant qualification spots to winners to attend the 2011 World Championship. We clearly can't replay the 2010 Israel Regional, but maybe something like this would provide an avenue for these teams to get some level of redemption.

That seems like a VERY VERY good idea.


Again, forgive any ignorance. I hope that FIRST won't repeat the things that went down at Israel...