North Bay Regional (2016)

[gp2013]

Originally Posted by Karthik

Hey Gary,

There's a lot that can be said about FRC reffing (it's well known that I've said a lot over the years), but despite that I don't think anyone can reasonably claim that FIRST prefers to allow unfair play to happen. There's definitely a concerted effort from GDC all the way down to the local referees to make things as fair as possible. Yes, there are still mistakes and the process can be improved, but I think it's a little disingenuous to suggest that FIRST is knowingly allowing unfair play.

I'm glad your team is already looking ahead to get past this and working on coming up with concrete suggestions on how to improve things for all participants in the future. I'm sure if you share some of these suggestions here, the community will gladly help and provide some of their own. Hopefully we can all come up with some ideas to help minimize the chances that a team walks away from an event feeling the way you did.

Thanks Kartik. I have responded by email rather than continue to hijack this post with frustrations. I really want to reiterate that team 2013 had a fabulous time in North Bay otherwise. I can't encourage teams enough to attend this regional. The city is 100% behind the program. After the red card issue we were showing the Mayors grandkids pictures of 781's robot because they love hockey so much. They were thrilled to see hockey sticks used on a bot. Chatting with the mayor and his family was a sample of some of the great experiences we had there.