St Louis Notes

[David Lantz]

To begin with I would like to say how happy I am that I was able to participate in the St. Louis regionals with so many fine teams. I really liked how involved many of the rookey teams were and how well some of them performed (way to go 1098)!! I'm even more happy that my team (525) was able to compete in the finals. Thank you all for a great time and the fun that we had. (especially teams 16 and 356).

However, I would like to bring up one downside that may have effected my teams performance in the quarterfinals. I do not want this to be miss-interpretated as poor sportsmanship or as a sore losser. But as most of the teams that were there know our autonomous mode was working great until someone figured out how to disrupt it. (whoever did this I congradulate, for we hadn't thought of this problem ourselves). By placing their boxes in front of us and mostly outside the scoring zone, the other alliances were able to deviate our intended path. Since I was the alliance captain I discussed this issue with the judges on it's legality. They had decided that this was fine as long as the tub was touching the scoring zone. However, if you look at the following link you will find that FIRST had ruled otherwise in a previous question:

http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp...ge=3256&q=6875

I do not want anyone to think that I believe that we should be given another chance nor that I'm saying that the other teams won unfairly. But that I would like to make sure that this was reconized and inforced at Nationals.

Congradulations to all of the winning teams, you deserve what you recieved for your hard work. Thanks again for a great time. Good luck all at nationals!!