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Originally Posted by Joe Matt
MORT: While I can't talk about that situation in detail, I will save that for the refs and other officials at Monty that did deal with it, it can be said that refs and announcersr made announcements about getting on the field and turing on robots numerous times during the period. While unfortuante that we couldn't allow for more time to let people repair their bots, due to us being off schedule we had to push through in order to allow for enough time for a field break down and packing.
I hope Conor, Sara, or Dave can explain more and give more details.
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Yes, I will say that there were announcements. But the problem that I found with those announcements (and it's questionable the drive teams heard them, after being down there myself), was that they were were to the effect of "oh, we're starting the match momentarily", but those were given over the course of approximately two minutes. Plus, momentarily is a relative word. If they had said "we're starting the match in one minute", then it would've been OK. But that was not the case. There was no "red team ready, blue team ready". I will echo my coach on this one. 237 gave up their timeout for us (which was only 5 minutes instead of ten, and if the judges had given us the full time we were entitled to, none of this would've happened), which was extremely gracious. FIRST is all about gracious professionalism and should be respected by all involved, IMHO. And IMHO, the judges did not recognize that graciousness. They seemed too worried about keeping to their schedule to not give 11 time to finish up with their robot (which would've been virtually one minute), but even when both (BOTH, I say) alliances wanted a rematch, the alliances were still too 'gotta-keep-to-the-already-at-least-an-hour-behind-schedule to grant us one rematch. They could've even given us one more minute, and, as I've said, we would not have had a problem.
Now, I hate to sound ungracious by slamming the officials, but to me, and I'll see who agrees (please respond with your opinion), but there's something not right with this picture. I realize that nothing can be done now and that it doesn't really matter anyways, as it is an off-season match, but officials and refs, just please take this as a PSA for the future, especially for regionals, as most of us believe this shouldn't have happened.
However, Monty Madness was overall a great event, very well run, beautiful school, everything was done well. Good job 1403!