[moderated] 469 Entanglement / Bad Refereeing on Galileo

[Tyler Olds]

Wow, where do I begin??

First off, I would like to congratulate 1218, 469, and 868 for winning a hard brutal match against us. After the 20 minutes it took for me to cool down, I have realized that this is still all a game, and that the true meaning of FIRST is not to win, but to be inspired in the fields on science and technology. After four years of being in first and on team 93 I have truly been inspired by changing my career field from a pilot, to a teacher where I can mentor a team.

I am really going to disregard everybody’s post, and put purely what I feel, my opinions are my own and may or may not represent my team's feelings of these matches. However as alliance captain and driver, I feel that I have a pretty unique perspective on this situation.

First match: Our plan was to have 492 knock off the bonus ball, grab a 2x ball, than prepare to cap. We were to catch, deliver and than prevent 469 from capping.

What actually happened: 492 was able to trigger the bonus ball, for some reason our basket caught a little piece of the mesh netting and did not open. Result: the balls fell onto our bot with out us catching any. We than decided to go over to the other side and attempt to catch our opponents balls while 492 were to grab a 2x ball and be ready to cap. The only problem is that since we are a 2 wheel drive bot, when we push from the side with out our drive wheels we tend to sometimes tip (we also purposely tip our selves when the balls are jammed in our basket to get them out). Because I was in the heat of the match and not thinking properly, I attempted to push 469 with the non-drive side of our bot. As we started to drive 469 back, our bot rode up 469 and tipped over (469 also tipped over). Result was a loss for us.

Now after the match, I was told that there was a flag thrown, 469 went under the goal, and also broke a part of the goal. My first reaction was to go up to the head ref and ask what was going on. This is what he explained to me (I will try to get this as close to a quote as I can). (Ref) It is all about intention, 469 damaged the field only after they were pushed by us and tipped over. They also did not intend to go under the goal either and they went underneath as a result of us.

(This is what I now feel) The ref was right about the damaging the field, it was our fault for trying to push them and it was completely accidental. Going underneath the goal: To be honest I do not remember nor see in the video any time where 469 went underneath the goal. I can only assume that their "wedge" which assists them to release balls went underneath the goal. If this was the case, yes a DQ should have been called, however I cannot confirm that this happened. If somebody could please PM what happened to me, I would appreciate it.

Second match: What was supposed to happen: 157 was supposed to trigger the bonus ball in auto from slot 1. Seeing that 469 has set up on that side, and that 157 hat to hit the goal to knock off the bonus ball, I decided to switch the robots so that 157 would instead block 868 from potentially blocking our corral with a goal. From there we were supposed to wait the 30 extra seconds. If 469 was going to cap us, we would either close our basket, or drive over to the other side and catch their balls. 157 was to cap with 30 sec left, and than hang from the bar, we were supposed to prevent 469 from capping.

What actually happened: 157 did not have to prevent 868 from blocking the corral, so they grabbed the 2x ball and got ready to cap. When 469 came over to prevent us from catching, I did not move cause I knew that we would still be able to catch the balls. When we caught them, we were to drive away, except that 469 had gotten caught in our netting. Thinking that we would be entangled for the remainder of the match, I told 157 to cap and hang. At about the moment that 157 capped, we came unstuck and were able to deliver balls. Our HP (who I have to say was one of the best shooters in FIRST) had to shoot 24 feet to try to make it into the mobile goal. I should have instructed 157 to decap so we could shoot into the stationary goal. After we dumped we again went at it with 469. They tipped over and did a fantastic job of self-righting and went to go decap our goal. 157 was instructed to go and hang while to defended 469 from decapping. We were able to defend 469 from decapping, however 157 did not have enough time to hang. Result was in a red win.

Once again after the match, I went over to the head ref and asked why there were no penalties on the field because our robot was really disabled for about 35 seconds of the match. Here is what I got out of what he said: (Ref) Your robot was built with netting, because of this; you have to accept that you might get entangled. I warned 469 to get away from your robot and they were able to do so. There will be no penalties.

(This is how I feel) 469's original intent was to attempt to cap us, they lost the ball and decided they would try to block balls with their arm. However they placed their arm too low and went into our robot. They became entangled and after a warning from the ref, tried to get away. Even though they really disabled us for a good portion of the match, I do not feel/hope that 469 tried to cause our robot harm. They only meant to beat us the only way we could be beaten, prevent us from delivering the balls. However, I do feel that in this match, weather or not they tried to disable/entangle/whatever our robot, that some type of penalty should have been called. However, being a referee in the field of soccer, I do know how hard it is to call something. Referees are always put in a losing situation. If they make a call for one team, they get yelled at by the other. The key is to really just go by what you think happened, and that is what the head referee did.

Recap on everything: This year no matter what the outcome, was the most exciting to watch, and participate in. Matches are not won or lost because of the referee, but from good robot design and strategy. Coming into the elims I thought that we did that by picking two fantastic and reliable alliance partners who did everything they were supposed to do. 1218, 469, and 868 won what I feel was the best semi final match I have ever seen or been in. Losing in the semis to the second place alliance is nothing to be disappointed about and while I am sad to have to leave team 93, I know that this is an experience that I will never forget.