Best Matches caught on Tape

[sanddrag]

Here's one you DEFINITELY need to get. I'm not sure where to get the video but if anyone has it/finds it please PM me.

2003 Los Angeles regional. Last match of the regional (final match of the finals). 696 and 294 vs 60 and ??? Absolutely incredible. I'll never forget it. "Heather" the 696 robot is pushing and slamming against 60 for the last 1/4 of the match trying to break them free and get on top of the platform. Pieces of robots are flying everywhere. Then with about 15 or 20 seconds left "Heather" dies due to extremely low battery voltage. The controller resests and Heather moves a couple inches up the ramp, then it dies and she falls back down. Meanwhile 294 is trying their best with only 1 side driving to beat on 60. All the robots are becoming fairly crippled. The clock shows only 2 seconds of match left. The crowd is going wild.<insert>I'm getting chills as I write this, seriously</insert> MO, the 696 driver makes one last attempt to achive the platform and slams the joysticks forward. Out of the blue, Heather comes back to life and leaps up the ramp and shoves 60 off the other side and now 294 and 696 are both on the platform and the buzzer sounds just as the last wheel of Heather makes it on. Half the crowd is cheering 20 times as loud as at the two second remaining mark. The other half the crowd is "awww"-ing even louder than that. No one is sure what the outcome of the match is. Each side still thinks they have more points for the win. As it turns out, the metal grate was ripped from its mounting and raised such that it was touching 294, not 294 was touching it. Then 696, was barely touching 294. The refs took about TEN MINUTES examining the robots and their positions before they came to the above conclusion. Then, they took another 15 MINUTES on how to score it. During this time, the crowd was very full of emotions. Some were screaming "What's the score" "who wins" "that robot broke the field" Others waited anxiously while biting their nails. Some just stared in silence. And some even cried.

A phone call was even made to a head person in FIRST to try to figure out how the situation should be scored. In the end, it turned out that that 696 and 294 were not given points because regardless of the field being damaged and perhaps not properly constructed/maintained, they were still touching the grate. To this day, no one knows if that was the right call, but the call was made and the decision lay final.

There's pics in the gallery of the end of this match.

For more exciting matches, I would suggest any of Heather's (696) winning matches at Phoenix in 2003. This is how it would usually go down. Heather would go out and flip both opponents right at the start of the match. Then she'd move some bins and once that got boring, she'd go to the top of the platform and spin and wave her arms wildly in the happy dance.

Heather was one bad girl.