[Chris_Elston]

While everyone can debated whether this was legal or not. Frankly is ok with me and our team. We shook hands afterwards, joked about it. etc. There are no hard feelings. I am glad the video was posted I certainly wanted to see it again and after the match, I grabbed my Blackberry and snapped a picture of it as well and shook my head. My second thought, was 1024 Kil-o-bytes at Boilermaker joking at me they would do that, and then I see it actually happen.

Samir my driver e-stopped the robot like we were suppose to do, there was no way we can drive out of the goal with memory foam with only 1" of ground clearance. With only 1" of ground clearance, you can not push our robot UP the goal, you can not drive the robot up the ramp. So by design, it wasn't suppose to go up the goalie ramp. There was a gash in the goalie ramp carpet that had to be taped up after the stuffing.

Surely when we designed the robot, we knew a defensive robot was going to be our biggest weakness. It was a risk 1501 took to play the game as we have done. We did not have the self-righter at Boilermaker which was the first time we saw our robot tip and contribute to our upset in the semi's. As you can see our righter was very effective at the CT Regional this weekend and used SEVERAL, SEVERAL times....

GP from Rosie's team was displayed afterwards and we were welcomed by "New England Defense" early in the first quarters match we played and tipped twice in the quarters 12 (seen on our Youtube Channel) as I heard all weekend by various teams New England likes defense. Rosie played the hardest defense I have ever seen in FRC to date. If we could not withstand the defense Rosie was dishing out, then we have not designed a robot that could withstand the defense that probably will be seen in Atlanta. We faked Rosie out several times in the SEMI 1 by traversing the tunnel and playing possum in SEMI 2 which seemed to work, so not all was lost, much needed driver experience was learned from Rosie and how to deal with driving under much pressure.

Our lesson is to learn by these experiences and move on. The most poetic thing was we had a ball in the front when we went into the goal, which was the tie game ball 6-6. Ball first, then robot next.

The triangle design was mostly contributed by the kiwi and 3-wheel drive system along if a robot was pushing us bumper to bumper we would be angled at the goal to make a clear shot anyway. We never thought about fitting into the goal. Small in foot print was by design as we noted Brazil's robot was the best scoring robot at CT we felt and deserved the Gold along with Uberbots. We clearly as a team felt good to be in the finals and wanted to go to Atlanta, put up a great fight with the best team we have ever worked with to date, Gaelhawks 230 and John Niski (230 coach) you are one amazing dude. I appreciated your willingness to work together and you have one heck of a team, we will never forget you. We are certainly honored to meet you and your team. Thanks for the great New England experience.

So before this thread gets too out of hand, there is no reason for anyone to analyze if Rosie did right or wrong, or if we are upset or not because I have written to tell you where we stand.

My students follow and learn from experiences this is how I lead them always in positive ways. They learn by losing, they learn by bad luck, they learn by improving, they learn the dumb FRC rules we all learn to not like, they learn how to cope with defeat, and learn how to overcome. These are all the things this 2010 season has brought us. These experiences can not be learned unless examples like these are set.

I am sure some maybe scratching your heads to my words, but I assure you, all of us Indiana Teams think alike, except some of us Indiana teams have a 5 year head start. The world is never "fair", there is certainly no GP in the real world of competitive products or two companies work against each other to beat up each other to become "king" of the market. That's really the message I want to teach my students to prepare them for college and work. That's the whole reason I do this. Yes ONE blue banner would be nice one of these days, but I've never lost focus of why we as mentors do what we do. It's about preparing the students for "defense" in life, and laugh when your robot gets scored into a goal.

Next time, I'll try and think faster and coach my alliance to use the end of the trident to dig it out of the goal instead of e-stopping and come right back fighting again.