2013 Buckeye Regional

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Robby Unruh

The connection at the venue was choppy at best, so we're working on uploading the archived matches to YouTube now. A couple may of been missed due to glitches in the software we used, but the majority of them will be up tonight @ http://www.youtube.com/frc3266 Also, we know there's an audio issue. We have no idea why it came through like that. Sorry.

Awesome, thank you!

[Akash Rastogi]

I'd like to extend a big congratulations to our friends on 2016 for another Chairman's banner. Great work guys, see you soon!

[BoilerMentor]

First, congratulations to team 2016 on their chairman's award. I was glad to see it go to such a deserving team. Congratulations to to 1629 on their engineering inspiration award, another great selection and a very deserving team. Congratulations to the winning alliance. We hope to see all of you at Championships.

Unfortunately, we will not be attending Buckeye again until the event is officiated by a different head referee. This is not because of the obvious liberties taken with the rules (which so many teams complained about), but because I have never seen an FIRST volunteer behave so inappropriately in their interaction with students. He ignored the drive team member standing in the question box for at minimum a single match. He would not allow them to show him the rule in question. He was standing uncomfortably close to our driver, speaking loudly, with an angry tone (I won't say yelling). When another student team member tried to diffuse the situation politely he was told to, "Step back". I observed the interaction and I'm proud of the way that my students handled themselves. They were polite, professional, and did not escalate the situation. The bottom line is that I will not allow my students to be treated in this manner.

The volunteer staff was very polite and professional, but I would have liked to have seen them better informed. All throughout Thursday, our Chairman's presenters were told that they were "accepting no Chairman's awards until Saturday." The sign-up sheet was eventually placed out near the end of the day Thursday, however. Then, when it was nearing time to present, the volunteers had no idea where the presentation room was. Our presenters were also told by multiple volunteers that presentations were not until Saturday. We did, eventually, get to the correct place. That aside, the volunteers were great.

All of that said. The other teams at the competition were great. We'd love to play with you in the future, but it will not be in Cleveland.

[slickvic2252]

The connection at the venue was choppy at best, so we're working on uploading the archived matches to YouTube now. A couple may of been missed due to glitches in the software we used, but the majority of them will be up tonight @ http://www.youtube.com/frc3266 Also, we know there's an audio issue. We have no idea why it came through like that. Sorry.

When will you be posting the elim matches

[Robby Unruh]

Originally Posted by slickvic2252

When will you be posting the elim matches

They're all being uploaded in order (currently on Qual #44), they should all be up before tomorrow. I'm going as fast as I can, promise!

[Orion.DeYoe]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

Team 2252, you guys were awesome. Your robot is a scoring machine. Without your 5 disc autonomous, we probably would not have made it through semifinal. We coordinated our offense very well without getting in each other's way.

Thanks! I'm really glad we got it working for eliminations. You guys were great partners! I'm so glad that we got you guys on our alliance we couldn't have won without you.

[Orion.DeYoe]

Thanks to 639 for believing in us! We had a great alliance and we worked well together. You guys really showed us how to have fun during tough elimination matches.

[synth3tk]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

Also had a bad experience with an Ohio team with one parent saving 5 rows (over 60 seats) by herself when our team was all there. She would not let us take any of the seats and her team finally showed up 10 minutes later. Not knowing what the social norm is in Ohio, we did not make a big fuss about it.

We had someone else complain about that and as far as I know, we had someone go up there and take care of it. Teams should make sure that the parents know the rules about seating (first come first serve).

[mathking]

Thank you very much to team 3266 for uploading all of the videos. I know what a huge task that is. Congrats to 639, 2834 and 2252 on your victory. The 132-117 loss to you in the quarterfinals will go down as one of the most intense matches we have played. Thanks for 4269 for picking us. Our growing collaboration with you at competition and back in Columbus has been rewarding, and I hope we get a chance to play with you at CAMM this June. Thank you 3266 for being excellent alliance partners. And congratulations to 1629 for their Engineering Inspiration award and 2016 for a well deserved Chairman's Award.

Finally we would like to congratulate our friends from 4611 for their Rookie All Star award and for their consistently improving robot over the course of the competition. I am confident they are on the right track in FRC.

[FIXIT]

Originally Posted by BoilerMentor

Unfortunately, we will not be attending Buckeye again until the event is officiated by a different head referee. This is not because of the obvious liberties taken with the rules (which so many teams complained about), but because I have never seen an FIRST volunteer behave so inappropriately in their interaction with students. He ignored the drive team member standing in the question box for at minimum a single match. He would not allow them to show him the rule in question. He was standing uncomfortably close to our driver, speaking loudly, with an angry tone (I won't say yelling). When another student team member tried to diffuse the situation politely he was told to, "Step back". I observed the interaction and I'm proud of the way that my students handled themselves. They were polite, professional, and did not escalate the situation. The bottom line is that I will not allow my students to be treated in this manner.


All of that said. The other teams at the competition were great. We'd love to play with you in the future, but it will not be in Cleveland.

We had a similar situation with our team captain while she was trying to get clarification on a ruling. The referee really needs to consider what the purpose of FIRST is all about and practice "Gracious Professionalism" when dealing with students. These are great teaching moments and as mentors we should take advantage of it.

[Deetman]

While I am in no way affiliated with the Buckeye Regional, if you had issues such as what I am reading here with a volunteer, I highly suggest you contact the volunteer coordinator for the event. Contact information for Buckeye is on http://www.oai.org/firstbuckeye/volunteers.html

Conduct such as what I've seen described is no way for any volunteer to act, especially in a key position.

[BurkeHalderman]

We have been attending Buckeye since we started the team four years ago, and consider it our “home regional”.

With that in mind Team 3266 will not be coming back to Cleveland next year, or any year after that. This has been the worst regional event we have ever attended.

And before you write this post off as just an upset kid complaining about a bad call or something there are actual legitimate reasons for our decision.

First off as was already mentioned the concessions were awful. If the venue won’t allow any outside food then they should actually be prepared and have enough food for 53 teams worth of people. Yesterday my team went to buy food (that’s extremely overpriced) not 15 minutes into the lunch break, and they were out of everything but popcorn! And we didn’t have time to walk somewhere to eat so we had to skip lunch.

Volunteers are great. It’s very kind of people to donate their time to help others and try and help run an event as big as an FRC regional. That being said there was several issues that my team, and other teams had with a few volunteers. I will not mention the teams that shared their problems with me or will I mention any names. One example was while in queue for a qualification match on Friday there was a queue’r who didn’t like how I was pushing the cart I guess and he grabbed the cart (with our robot on it!) from my hands and forcefully rolled it to where he wanted it. He made no attempt in communicating with me where he wanted the cart to be positioned, the big problem I had with this is was that volunteer had never worked with our robot or cart before, he had no knowledge of how our robot was made to sit on our cart, or how easily it would have been for the robot to fall off with a sudden jerk of the cart. Our cart is about four feet tall and our robot would have had some serious damage if it would have fallen.

The head referee was beyond unprofessional and not at all in the spirit of gracious professionalism. Not because he made bad calls, that wasn’t really an issue or something fair to complain about, but because he was rude, arrogant and mean-spirited. There is a reason the question box exists. It is there for when a student has question about a call, or rule, or the game play in general. There were three or four times this guy caused problems for us. One of the many examples was after our last quarter-finals match, one of our scouts (you know her as the girl who accepted our alliance invitation in German) went to the question box to ask the ref about a situation in the match. She was more than polite to him when asking her question and he immediately went off on her and questioned her if she even knew the rules and how the game was played. He continued to raise his voice in attempt to humiliate her, and when she got tired of it and started to walk away he called her back saying “Get back here, I’m not done with you” he demanded to know her team number and when she said 3266 he replied “the judges will here about this one”. Now who agrees that the head ref was WAY out of line? He went out of his way in attempt to humiliate her and punish our team for having a simple question. She was very upset and it took a while to calm her down. This was her first event as a member of our team, everything there was new to her and I felt very bad for her that she had to deal with this man, who was down right just a bully.

There were many confrontations with the head ref, not only from our team, but at least to my knowledge, several others as well.

We feel as a team that the $4,000 we spent to compete at Buckeye was a complete waste, and could have been spent elsewhere that would have been more beneficial to the team.

However we did enjoy competing with all the teams there, I had a good time socializing and made some new friends. Thanks to 4269 and 1014 for being amazing alliance partners! And congratulations to 639, 2252 and 2834 for the regional win!

Feel free to PM me if you would like more details.

[Lydia Yeckley]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

However practice facilities is lacking with 53 teams. We have to wait for a very long time to get to use the field. Also had a bad experience with an Ohio team with one parent saving 5 rows (over 60 seats) by herself when our team was all there. She would not let us take any of the seats and her team finally showed up 10 minutes later. .

I'm sorry to hear that. That is not the true norm here. I believe I know which team you are referring to, mostly because the same woman may have tried with us on Friday. Ironically, it was in the same spot 2252 has been sitting since our founding in 2007. I hope you didn't receive must hassle after that.

Also, I would like to extend my thanks out to teams 639 and 2834. We really couldn't have done it with out you guys!
639, Code Red Robotics, truly is a fun-loving team. It was a blast dancing, cheering, singing (amazingly on 'Living On A Prayer' I might add), and meeting all of you while we were in queuing. Not to mention we are ecstatic that you picked us!
2834, Bionic Barons, you guys were extremely reliable on and off the field. And for that we thank you. Sharing the feeding station was no problem and it was a beautiful sight.

Hoping to see you all in STL!

[Joon Park]

Despite the unqualified head referee, we had an absolute blast at Buckeye. I went into the regional uncertain of the outcome, due to the numerous robot problems we experienced at our previous week 1 regional. Thankfully, the mechanical and programming solutions we implemented after our first regional were successful and our robot performed to expectations.

I never could have believed we'd end up ranked 2nd or that we'd bring home a blue banner. To 2834, 2252: in hindsight, we could not have picked better alliance members. The scores we racked up in eliminations were well beyond my hopes and most importantly, I had one of the most exciting and fun times of my life working with your drive team members. Thank you so much to all of you.

Oh, and 2252: that was an absolutely SICK autonomous you guys had there.

[JJackson]

First id like to say congratulations to 2016 for your Chairman's win and to 639, 2252, and 2834 on the regional win. I'd also like to thank and say sorry to 2016, and 3496 you were great alliance partners.

I will say our captain had multiple bad experiences with the head ref, and leave it at that. I have also never been in a drivers' meeting where you have not been allowed to ask for clarification on any rules. The live scoring was way worse than at the Canadian regionals (usually accurate within 3 points), while at Buckeye they were out by almost 100 points one match(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3jjWmlpry0) and 20 another.


On the other hand all of the other volunteers that I interacted with were all quite pleasant. As well as everyone I spoke to in the pits from other teams

EDIT: There were a few teams that didn't have their home state/province called out including ours, right before we went up to sing our national anthem. I know there was a what? moment for a lot of us.