Central WA: The Best Worst Day Ever

[SciBorg Dave]

Does anyone know who won and what happen at the Central Washington Regional. I stayed for the finals but had to leave to get home Saturday night.
The final match was a good one with teams 360-2557-3789 winning by a very slim margin. But I see they have teams 753-1425-1983 as the winners.
Who won and why?

[Matthx]

The original match results that were revealed to the teams at the event were a score of 94-94, at which point the win was awarded to the blue alliance according to the tie-breaker rules in the rule book about foul points making it a 94-95 win for blue.

Further review of the scoring at the regional showed that red's score was miscounted by two, so after triple-checking that that was not in error the actual match score was found to be a 96-94 win for the red alliance, which was announced at the event some time later.

It was a really unfortunate series of events for the blue alliance that put a bit of a damping confusion on what was otherwise an incredibly energetic competition.

[MrJohnston]

It was a mess.... The last match was initially a tie and decided on the first tie breaker - awarding the win to the team with the fewest foul points (360 and co.). However, part way into the awards ceremony there was an announcement: a disk had been stuck in one of the goals, changing the outcome. Therefore the win was awarded to 1425 and their alliance. It was brutal all the way round.

[jason701802]

Today's post on the FRC Blog offers a pretty comprehensive recap: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...he-right-thing

I know that many on our team have expressed feelings of numbness about how the events unfolded. I hope that 360, 2557 and 3789 all have a chance to showcase their great robots at championships. We will not be attending championships and I wish we could give them our spot.

Full disclosure, I was not at the event, I was volunteering in Long Beach.

[SciBorg Dave]

How sad to have a new event, hurt by miss count.

[Navid Shafa]

I would like to share with the CD community what Kevin Ross, the founding Chairman of FIRST WA had to say about the Central Washington Regional:


Kevin Ross
The Best Worst Day ever

Gracious professionalism is very easy when everything is going your way. When you are happy, GP is just the icing on the cake. GP is, however, only mastered when you can muster the strength to be gracious and professional in the face of extreme disappointment.

It is hard to imagine having a tough day at an FRC regional. It happened on Saturday in Ellensburg. Match three of the finals initially came up as a tie, and the tie breaker rule was used to give the win to the Blue Alliance. Almost immediately after announcing the win to the audience, it was discovered that a red Frisbee was incorrectly tallied, meaning that the Red alliance had actually won. The FTA’s, Referees, and Scorekeepers did extreme due diligence to insure that the new information was correct. In the end, the final decision was reversed and the Red Alliance was given the final victory.

Walking out with our MC Blair to inform the audience and the teams about this decision was by far the single worst thing I have ever had to do in the FIRST world. This was really going to be painful. Honestly, I was unprepared for what happened next.

The reaction from everyone in the room when the details were announced was so perfectly gracious professional, I don’t think I could have scripted it better in a bad after school movie. There were no outbursts, there were no stomped feet, there were no boos or cheers. There was a measured, thoughtful, and serene reaction to the news.

I don’t believe it is possible to be more proud of 50 teams of high school students who at once felt extraordinary empathy for their friends on the Blue Alliance ; of the 3 teams on the Red alliance who even though they had won the event by playing their game still offered to give up their win ; of the 3 teams on the Blue alliance who were suffering incredible disappointment yet acknowledged that it was the correct thing to do.

The one group that honored gracious professionalism the most, however, are the volunteers who initially missed the red Frisbee in the goal. Gracious Professionalism encompasses integrity and honesty. It took a lot of courage to initiate and come forward to admit this mistake and to work through the amazing range of horrific emotions that followed. They are working in the system they were provided by FIRST, and there was obviously a hole in the process for scoring.

The Red Alliance teams felt very bitter sweet and awkward in their win. I acknowledge that. I also ask them to let it go. The correct teams did win the event, and I applaud your teams not only for winning, but being so incredibly gracious and professional about the way that it happened. I can imagine any other high school sport where a incident like this would be followed with such grace.

So I leave this experience with an extraordinary appreciation of how the FIRST community can be unified in their grace and empathy for their competitors. We should all be extremely proud.

[Navid Shafa]

Frank the head of FRC also posted the following on his blog:

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...he-right-thing

[Thad House]

I saw this on Facebook last night, and it made me remember why I am a part of FIRST, and how it has truly changed my life for the better. All of the people in this entire community are amazing, and I am glad to be a part of it. Nobody is perfect, but a great person realizes their mistakes, and doesnt let it bring them down, but lets it bring them up into being a better person.

[David Brinza]

More proof that, in FIRST, it really isn't whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

[Jon Stratis]

My thoughts go out to everyone on both alliances - this is a very tough situation to be in, on either side. Unfortunately, mistakes do happen... 2 years ago my team was involved in a finals match that ended in a similar way- it was the second match of the finals (the red alliance won the first match), the red alliance out scored the blue alliance, but there was a red card against the red alliance. The score was displayed, showing a red alliance win and victory music started playing. They fixed the error quickly and pulled down the score, forcing a long announcement about how the red card affected the match and the results. There was a lot of confusion, and it was difficult to get everyone to get back on the field for that third match.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to have the suspense and excitement build up while the tie breaker explanation was going on, only to have the results reversed a short while later. Keep your heads held high - it sounds like everyone handled it well, which says a lot more about the teams in question than a regional win does.

[Racer26]

I haven't seen anybody mention this aspect of it yet:

The miscounted frisbee was a colored frisbee. It was likely a human player on the red alliance that won them the regional.

[tickspe15]

I think the red disk was shot by 1425 as they ran out of disks

[Bob Steele]

I wanted to speak from the perspective of one of the Red Alliance teams.
It was, indeed, a very bittersweet win for us. i certainly applaud and appreciate the blue alliance teams for their grace after the announcement but I wanted to also say that the red alliance teams were also subdued and gracious in their response.

It was not pleasant for anyone... but it was necessary.
i know some of my younger team members started to stand up and cheer and that the older veteran members tried to restrain them... when we were announced as the winner.

The Blue Alliance teams are our friends...they sat right in front of us..we simply could not add to their disappointment by cheering a hard fought victory. It is tough to see your friends so disappointed and in emotional pain. The sweetness of victory certainly was lost and can't be regained.
I had a discussion with some members of the team and Kevin Ross came over and talked with them too. We could not help but feel that it was somehow our fault that our friends were hurt. We wanted to take the hurt away but we couldn't. Kevin was very good and explained that it was not our fault...

It was exceedlngly difficult to figure out how to act. I still don't feel right about it and it will take a long time for that to leave. We want to get over it.. but FIRST is a big family and 3 teams from our family were hurt.

Now, I didn't say this to make anyone feel bad. Mistakes are made and I am not blaming anyone... I think I just had to type it out to get some closure. It was easy to miss seeing the frisbee... and yes indeed it was a human player that threw it in... In fact right after the match, our human player told me he had hit a two pointer... It was very hard to see the red disk ... but it was found and seen by a number of people.
I know because I got several messages from the stands asking me about it. Evidently it was easier to see from the stands.

After I got the information I pondered the situation for a minute and then decided that I needed to talk to the Alliance Captain about it and the alliance captain went over to the Referees and asked about the frisbee that some thought had been missed. I honestly thought that he would come back and tell me that they had counted it and nothing would be changed.
I had no idea that this would happen.

It was really unfortunate and I don't blame anyone for anything. The referees and score keepers did their best all during the tournament and everything was perfectly fine. We had a great time and everyone was wonderful. For a new regional, everything ran remarkably smoothly.

Again, I apologize for the length of this post... but I had to say something about how proud I was of the Red Alliance (Teams 1425, 753 and 1983)... No one came down from the stands and celebrated... all three teams acted with a subdued joy of victory. During the medal ceremonies .. the teams (both alliances) showed grace and professionalism in their respect for each other as we have always done. I was very proud of every single one of them

thank you all for reading.
I hope this doesn't happen again...

[Bob Steele]

Originally Posted by Racer26

I haven't seen anybody mention this aspect of it yet:

The miscounted frisbee was a colored frisbee. It was likely a human player on the red alliance that won them the regional.

It was thrown in by a human player. 1425 was shooting at the three point goal and if they had been shooting at the 2 point goal there would have been several disks in the goal and there would have been no issue with a single disk in the goal.

Our human player threw it in at the end... I high-fived him for doing it.
It was the only points our team scored during the 3rd match...the spike for our compressor had malfunctioned before the first match and we had played without a compressor for all three finals matches. We had enough air left in our tanks to shoot four in during autonomous in the 2nd match but during the 3rd match we had no autonomous and we could not shoot.

We could only play defense against two very good shooters (360 and 2557)
1425 did the long range scoring...753 helped them stay clear..

[Racer26]

Hearing that 1983's human player effectively won the regional under such circumstances really stinks.

Ordinarily, a tight fought round of finals decided by a single human-player thrown disc would be grounds for great celebration and excitement, but because of the miscount its been tainted.

Don't get me wrong, I think its great that the referees have righted the wrong and done the right thing, and THAT should be celebrated, as several times in relatively recent memory, regionals have been decided by blown calls, its just a shame the miscount happened at all.