Unofficial Chaos

[Andy Grady]

Unfortunately Battlecry left quite a nasty taste in my mouth for myself, my teamates, and our alliance partners. Now there is nothing that I can say or do that will go back and change what happened yesterday, the rulings, the arguements, or anything. I just want our feelings to be known just so teams can understand why we were so upset yesterday after the DQ, and so that future competition planners can take from this to provide an experience that may be less contraversial and more fun...

Many of you may have heard about the happenings at Ralley in the Valley a couple of months ago. For those who don't, there was a contraversial ruling on tipping against team 121 which they were forced to remove the wedge from their robot because they tipped another robot while fighting for the top of the ramp. As you know, tipping on the ramp was a frequent occurance over the course of the offical FIRST season, and was considered completely legal unless it was extremely blatent. (Which usually came when teams with arms put them up at an angle that would make it impossible for a team not to tip). Well, the referee's at Ralley had decided to make a statement on the move by forcing 121 to remove the wedge from the robot for the finals. Unfortunately the ruling caused for many teams to leave Ralley upset, and caused alot of contraversy.

One of the teams at Ralley who was involved in the whole tipping/pinning fiasco as 190, the hosts of Battlecry. In an effort to try to avoid the same contraversy that Ralley had fallen victim to, they changed the rules to further clarify tipping. These rules were extremely strict when it came to wedgebots and were implimented both online with a few extra clarifications being made at a meeting earlier in the day. In the quarterfinals, 121 tipped 190 on top of the ramp, and got DQ'ed further eliminating them and my team from the competition.

Our beef lies with this. The whole day due to the rules that were set forth, both team 121 and 126, who were pretty much the only two wedgebots at the competion, had felt like thier "hands were tied" for the whole competition as we were not able to use our robots for what they were designed to do, due to the fact that we had to be extra careful not to break the tipping rule. And just so teams understand, contrary to popular belief, our robots WERE NOT designed for the soul purpose of tipping other robots over! We built a wedgebot because of our belief that teams would use any means necessary to anchor themselves to the top HDPE surface, so we had every right to take any means necessary to create a design to remove those robots as well as any other strong robots from the top of the ramp. At various points during the day, the fear of being DQ'ed had cost us rounds due to the fact that we could not just drive up to push a team up and off the top of the ramp due to the fact that we were afraid of being DQ'ed for something that until Battlecry was a completely legal maneuver. Furthermore, 121 had been warned early in the day for tipping in autonomous mode...something that they had no control over, and that if they did it again, they would be DQ'ed. In quarterfinal match 1, we were tipped in autonomous mode by a non-wedgebot, no warning given to them. Also couple this with the fact that after the DQ to 121 for tipping, in a later round in a play that looked exactly the same minus the wedge, 176 tipped 157 and did not get DQ'ed. As you can see, due to the fact that we were wedgebots, it was almost as if we were singled out...at least that is what our feeling was. That is what we were all upset about.

Like I said, what happened yesterday, I cannot change. I can just warn teams who are to run competitions in the upcomming year that this is a very fine-line call that could cause alot of problems if it is not dealt with correctly. It is my feeling at least that organizers should be very careful when tinkering with the rules that FIRST had adhered to all year long, as everytime there has been a deviation from what FIRST's standard call was, there has been major problems.

In closing, I do want to congratulate the competition staff for what otherwise was a very well run competition due to all the hard work and effort. And I appologize to those staff members who may have been upset when teams flipped out at them, as I know you all were just doing your job...a very difficult one at that.

Thank You,
Andy Grady

p.s. Brandon, please do not delete this post...lock it if you must, but please privately talk to me before doing anything more than that.