[ThirteenOfTwo]

I was a little irritated at our recent regional with the penalties which were alternately called and not called. Once we lost a match by one point because the refs failed to notice that a team on the opposing alliance had literally had one of its bumpers fall off, and Kalani High School almost got a red card for ending the match directly between a team and its tower (but not touching either and not trying to harass its opponent).

These were understandable mistakes given the amount of stress that the judges were under, but the one thing that was really excessive in its not-being-called was deliberately aggressive play. One team in particular became notorious; nearly every single robot that tried to play defense on them wound up flipped, broken, or stuck in one of the goals and unable to get out because of the two-inch lip. We were one of the very few teams who tried defending on them to make it out of the match intact, and that was pretty much only because a) we had an exceptionally sturdy and low-to-the-ground robot and b) we crossed the bump with a minute remaining to go help our alliance partner in the midfield score some points. Not a single penalty was ever called on them, and they ended up doing extremely well in the tournament. I don't mean to insult them, because they really do have a great robot and a talented driver, and they completely deserved their win, but I felt that the level of aggressiveness that was displayed as a part of their strategy was questionable and should have been called.

Even more prevalent than "accidental" tipping was getting jammed into the goals. If you can believe it, it was actually a defensive strategy discussed by certain teams to wait near the bump until a ball was herded into the goal, then charge the team that herded it in and ram them so hard that they would become stuck, effectively pinning them for the rest of the match. Teams that tried to play defense on robots with high traction by getting between those robots and the goals sometimes ended up with their robot pushed in instead of the ball, effectively neutralizing the entire alliance's defensive capabilities. Maybe the next update should have something to do with this...