Controversy at Rutgers

[K. Skontrianos]

In one of our matches at the Rutgers regional, our alliance was DQ'd for illegally scoring a ball. I believe we were allied with 529. We were winning the match easily and throwing human player balls into the opponents' goal to increase our QP score. Now here's our dilema . We had one human player on our team shoot ballls. In addition, our ally shot balls with their human player and their controller(he only had a limited role from what I can tell). At the end of the match, it was announced that we were disqualified because 3 people shot balls onto the field. We were told that this was illegal. In fact, the ref even pointed out each person who shot the balls. However, no rule states that only human players may return balls to the field. Rule GM15 states that anyone on an alliance may handle balls except for the mentors. After pointing this out to the refs, we were not given a full explanation for thier ruling. We asked them to specify where the rule book stated that only human players can return that balls, but they could not. We never got a good explanation of the ruling against us. After further protest, the accusation against us was changed. Instead the refs now assumed that a mentor had to have either driven the robot or throw the balls in order to have 3 throwers. They arrived at the new accusation after deliberating over our plea during lunch. This change in position angered us greatly and showed the obvious weakness in their argument.After explaning to them that our ally's controller had thrown the balls, they said that simply wasn't possible. The refs explained that they could not create a scenario where 3 people returned balls to the field without using the mentor as a human player or driver. Our explanation did not satisify them at all, but instead seemed to anger them. We obviously shattered whatever logic they had used to justify the DQ.
We then asked them to point out to us where our error was on video tape, but they refused. While I understand that plays will not be reviewed, we only wanted an explanation of our alliance's mistake to avoid further conflict in the future. Nevertheless, we were denied a decent explanation. It seems that the refs screwed up and then tried to find whatever they could to justify the ruling.
We were victim of a terrible mistake at our regional today. We lost over 50 QP's due to this ruling. I believe that the refs' altering accusations and poor explanations shows that they realized their mistake, but refused to fix it. In fact, we were treated fairly rudely and not even offered an apology. While I realize that mistakes are made, in the spirit of "gracious professionalism", which FIRST is so fond of, we should have at least had an apology given to us. We deserve an explanation of what we did wrong in that match. Trying to make up stories only worsens the situation. The is no reason why we shouldn't be told what really happened. A mistake was made, but was not even acknowlegded. Why is it necessary for the refs to conjure fantasy scenarios to try to decieve us? No team deserves to be lied to or be the victim of a bad call based on assumption.
What I'd like to ask first of all, have other teams utilized 3 non-mentor human players to send balls into the field? Also, has anyone else been the victim of an obvious mistake? If so, how was the problem dealt with and what was done to fix the problem?

[Stephanie]

okay, lemme get my impression straight:
each team is allowed three humans in the alliance station:
-one driver
-one human player
-one mentor
the mentor is not allowed to touch the balls or controlling devices, correct? if we have a student take the place of the mentor, i was under the impression that they were allowed to handle the balls. did your alliance have two adult mentors?
if this is the case, the refs were correct in their ruling, according to my understanding. also, you said that the controller had limited participation in the ball shooting, how did that work? driving takes a bit of concentration, wouldn't that be hard?

i agree that your alliance deserved an explaination of the ruling, it might even help other teams in other regionals to know why this is. it was wrong of them not to justify their ruling, but i vowed to myself not to side in cases such as these...

[Justin]

Hi,

While I admitedly am not sure what the rules regarding drivers throwing balls are. I do know that in pretty much every year since the human players moved behind the glass with the drivers, mentors have been allowed to hand balls to human players. I have noticed...that FIRST is really really pressing the limited roll of the mentor, and apparently the defined rolls of drivers, operators, and human players. This is all very ironic.

Last year teams were upset because there were some mentors in the drivers's box that would get really heated, this was because of the nature of last years game...team's strategies were so dependent on precise timing, etc. So some asked if perhaps the number of adult coaches shouldn't be limited. FIRST listened...but the game also made this need uncessecary. Regardless of the rule's history...they are certianly enforcing it...with a villigence that I think is surprising many FIRST teams. I've see lots of teams DQed for mentors stepping out of the driver station, or touching controls. I think in both those situations, and your own, there should have been a warning. At least if they had told you to stop what you were doing during the match you could have played on...and researched it later...rather than DQing you.

I sympathize, good luck with the rest of the comp., and I hope it doesn't ruin your expirence.

-Justin

[Ken Leung]

Originally posted by Stephanie
okay, lemme get my impression straight:
each team is allowed three humans in the alliance station:
-one driver
-one human player
-one mentor

Nope. You are allowed 4 members per team to go up on stage. Two drivers, one human player, and mentor. So, in the situation they described, it is very possible that the second driver help shoot balls into the field while the robot is sitting there waiting.

[AdamT]

Rule 2.3 in the documentation:

"The students and mentors are permitted free movement within the alliance station. All alliance members are allowed contact with the balls.

Mentors are not allowed to return balls to the playing field."

Rule GM15:

"Contact with the balls by all alliance members in their stations is acceptable, but Mentors are not allowed to return balls to the playing field."

These are the only mention to the ruling in the manual. I want to say that in the driver meeting that they said *at least at VCU* that only one student was supposed to be returning balls to the playing field. I may very well be wrong though.

I have to agree that this is a very ambiguous stating of the rules, all around.

[Chris Dibble]

Just to clarify what happened....There was one adult mentor on each driving team. At our regional, nothing was mentioned about the amount of people who could retrun balls onto the field. What was stated was that the alliance could be DQ'd if a human player threw a ball into a goal, while they were standing outside the alliance station (marked by tape). Hope this helps a bit.

Chris

[Stephanie]

Ken and Adam,
thanks for clearing that up, I see I was wrong

[AdamT]

It's no problem. I was merely trying to help out the original poster by posting the ambiguous rules.

[MChen]

At Colombia (NYC) this weekend, the refs instructed the operator team that the mentor was not allowed to "touch" balls. This would result in a DQ.

Now, the rule quotes post above seem to indicate that a mentor can touch balls as long as he isn't the one throwing them back onto the field (ie. he can hand them to a human player).

Also, there were quite a few DQs in NYC due to human players reaching over the wall to deliver balls.

-Mark
Team 41
NYC Regional Finalist

[Amy Beth]

Gd, i hate this sort of controversy.
I do not believe there is any basis in the rules for the call that was made against your alliance, K, HOWEVER, there is also no basis in the rules for changing a poor decision made by the referees. It was, needless to say, in very poor taste for your referees to change their reasoning behind that ruling. But the referees should never have had to give a reason for their ruling at all. The referees' decisions are FINAL, period, regardless of whether the ruling was justified.
Now, maybe this is not the best way for a competition to be run, but the rules are very clear that this is how the comp. is to be run, and it's a bit too late in this season to be arguing that now. If you have a problem with it, make sure you let FIRST know, but wait until after this season is over, and do it before next year starts.
Hope this doesn't make anyone mad

[K. Skontrianos]

Granted, all rulings are final, but on the sheet we received at Rutgers, play disputes were specifically mentioned. Instructions were given as to how to dispute a call made by the refs, and we followed these rules. A reason needs to be given for DQ'ing a team. How else can you prevent your alliance from breaking that same rule again if you don't know what you did wrong? By the way, I've seen the refs change the scoring last year after making mistakes. It happened to us in one match, where part of our robot touched the big ball on top of a goal. At first we were given credit, but after a few minutes the points for the big ball were taken away, which was the right call. So changing the scoring has happened in the past. In any case, thats not what we asked for. An explanation or apology would have satisfied us. I don't think that is asking too much.

[Ian W.]

Originally posted by MChen
At Colombia (NYC) this weekend, the refs instructed the operator team that the mentor was not allowed to "touch" balls. This would result in a DQ.

Now, the rule quotes post above seem to indicate that a mentor can touch balls as long as he isn't the one throwing them back onto the field (ie. he can hand them to a human player).

yes, i was going to mention domethnig on this too...

last weekend, on LI, all members of the alliance were allowed to touch the balls, but the mentors were not allowed to throw them out of the player station. there was no mention about second drivers being able to throw or not.

today, before our first match at NYC, one of the refs came up to explain about not reaching over the divider, which made perfect sense because of all the DQ's resulting from that. but, she also mentioned, "Mentors MAY NOT touch the balls". now, this conflicted with the LI regional, and with the rules in the manual. she went over to ask, and then did come back right before the match, but seeing as i was the driver, i was preoccupied getting into my "zone", so i never heard her response. if she did indeed say that mentors MAY NOT touch the balls, i belive that is a violation of the rules laid out at the beginning of January, and is in very bad taste. hopefully we'll get around this snafus before the nats.

[Ian W.]

at NYC, there was a tie (30, 30) and the red tea mone by having more goals i think. as i looked down on the field, i saw the head ref run on shaking his head. a few minutes later, "opps, it's 32, 30, but the red still won". they had apparently missed one ball in a goal.

[ColleenShaver]

At VCU, I recall one of our alliance partners operators stepping back from the controls, grabbing some balls and start throwing. I was a little leary because I couldn't recall what the rule was on that right away, but the ref made no move to flag or argument, and he was in full view of this happening (i.e. 3 students sending balls to the field).

There was no problem with it, nor DQ's at VCU... I don't recall it being a common thing though.

[Anthony S.]

From my interpretation of the rules, I think it is legal for 3 people to put balls in. On my team, we only have 1 driver, the driver grabs the goal be the button on the joystick. So that leaves a human player and what we call a student coach. I don't think the coach threw a ball over the wall but I can see this happening in a match and I'd like to get this straight just in case we do it. The ref really needs to give an explanation. If they were wrong, why can't they just admit to thier mistake and apologize. I know they can't change what happened and change the score, but I would have been satisfied with an apology and them to admit to thier mistake, we all make mistakes, we're human, we understand that and they should too.