2012-Greater Toronto Regional East

[PriyankP]

I can't believe some of the things that have been said in this thread. Teams bashing other teams publicly because of their strategy, teams bashing other teams publicly for being successful, teams bashing other teams publicly for being a good team. For the first time, I am ashamed of being a part of FIRST and trying to spread it to friends and colleagues.

Some of the words used to describe Team 2185 by teams on social networking sites and users here are just plain disrespectful to the team and its students and mentors. You guys started bashing them when you didn't have the full knowledge of what happened and why it happened. While the actions of some of the team members on the playing field might be considered ungracious, it is no reason to publicly curse at the whole team or to call them names. That is, by definition, ungracious.

Choosing to not balance the white bridge with the opposing alliance is a valid strategy this year and has already changed the outcomes of competitions that took place in weeks one and two. I believe that the bridge is a good addition to the game because it is a way to make sure that the alliances in the eliminations are (somewhat) balanced. For whatever reason, if a team feels that by not balancing the bridge, they will have a higher chance of winning, then there is nothing ungracious about it. However, it is my personal opinion that if an alliance member chooses to balance the white bridge, they should not be prevented from doing so.

The amount of hate in this thread is just ridiculous. Team 1114 and Team 2056 have not committed a crime by being good. Neither have they been ungracious about anything! Hating on teams who have raised the bar for success is just stupid. Also, since when is it acceptable to publicly humiliate a team by posting on Chief Delphi that _____ team was on our blacklist for _____ reason? If you don't like the team's actions on/off the field, keep it within your team and when it comes to alliance selections, you can choose to not work with the team.

The reason why this matters to me is because I tried to get certain influential people at my university to see how amazing FIRST is by sending out a few links and I (foolishly) included a link to this thread. At this point I really hope that they decided to not read everything in this post after the first 2 pages. It will not only be embarrassing for me, but it will also hurt FIRST because of very few bitter individuals.



Amid all the controversies, I would like to congratulate teams 1114, 2056, 1219 for winning the regional. You guys were definitely a force to reckon with and fun to compete with. I hope you know that no one on 188 has any hate towards you. In fact, many students try to look at your previous work and have learned a lot from it.

Congratulations to Simbotics for the regional Chairman's Award, your Chairman's video was really inspiring! Congrats to 2809 for the double engineering awards! And as a Team 188 alumni and mentor, I would also like to congratulate the students on my own team for another successful regional; eventually we'll get the gold!

610, you guys had a wonderful robot and were a great alliance captain! As usual, it was a pleasure working with you and I hope to team up again in the future and win some hardware. 3360, you guys were brilliant and the triple balance was just out of question without you guys!

I apologize if you feel anything I said is wrong; please do not associate my opinions to that of my team.

Thank you to all and hope to see you next year!

~ Priyank