Curie Semifinal 1 - 3, what happened?

[Travis Hoffman]

I'm sorry, I've been too busy collecting facts and personal statements from independent sources to really digest the rest of this thread prior to this post. I will leave the replies to those posts to honest people who feel the need to provide factual evidence on this extremely unfortunate situation. One would hope and pray that rumor-mongerers and piler-oners would stay away from this. Some would truly appreciate this gesture of doing and saying nothing.

The following was sent to me from our pit mentor, Donnell, who is notorious for remaining in the pit during elimination rounds due to some strange superstition. I know this doesn't answer all the questions I'm sure are swimming around inside all your little heads right about now, but perhaps this is a good start at finding out the truth about all of this?

"After the robot came back to the pits (after the Curie Finals) I went to congratulate Johnny (Pasco) and he was visibly upset and shaken. I thought he was just exhausted from all the excitement, as his face was red and he had his head down on his arms leaning on the "War Wagon". I put my arm around him and congratulated him on a great season. He just lifted his head up and stared into space and shrugged. I told him to hold his head up because he had a great season as a new driver (winning a regional) and didn't do any worse in Atlanta than we did last year. He just said, "Yeah, but I broke their arm." I asked, whose arm, and he said 1114. This is the first I had heard about the whole incident. I was surprised that this specific incident was bothering him that much considering it was a whole tier of the Curie Finals prior to what he had just completed. Not knowing the severity of the incident, I just told him not to worry about it because everybody's robot gets damaged, especially in the Championship Finals. Pasco said, "No, you don't understand, their arm just snapped in half - I didn't mean to do it and I wasn't trying to do it, I didn't know what happened until it broke." …….he stopped short and said that he didn't want to talk about it anymore, he didn't know what to do…..then he walked away."

************************************************** *************


...

[Nawaid Ladak]

if you watch the video until the end, you will notice, that if there were 3 more seconds given on the field, we wouldn't be talking about this, instead we would be talking about how great of a team 1114 is, facing all that adversity and still able to lift MARS up.

How close they came was almost amazing, it just goes to show HOW GREAT 1114 really was.

also I wanted to know this, im trying to figure this out, but i couldn't find it anywhere, if that ringer that wasn't scored, if that counted, what would have been the final score, that also goes for the 469 descored ringer.

TIA

[Karthik]

I've taken some time to calm down, and now I'm ready to post some facts. I'll leave my opinions out of this, because they're clearly clouded by my emotions. PM me if you want to hear my rambles.

Fact: Team 48 had been posting on CD numerous times about the virtues of defense. You can search for these posts. Not a big deal, since defense is part of the game. Until you put into the context of this match.

Fact: Team 48 "joked" about wanting to play defense on 1114, whille being their partner, so that they could "show off their defense"

Fact: Team 48 nearly ripped 1114's arm off in a qualifying match at the Toronto Regional. They backed away, allowing 1114 to proceed, and score an additional 3 tubes. A mentor from 48 then said (paraphrasing from memory) "If we weren't so concerned about your arm, we could have completely shut you down that match"

Fact: Members of Team 48's driveteam, led by the Drive Coach, celebrated when 1114's arm snapped off. This was witnessed by myself, and numerous members of other teams. If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I would not believe it myself.

Fact: After the arm snapped off, 48 stopped playing defense on 1114, making it seem like they knew what had happened

Fact: Multiple Team 48 members told members of 1114 to "look out, we're coming after you" prior to the matchup. Normally we would just assume that meant they were going to defend us. In the context of the match, my feelings are now different.

Fact: Team 48 was booed by a large section of the Curie stands (1114 was not part of this group) when they were announced for their next match. I have never seen this at FIRST event before, and I think it says a lot about how upset people were about this incident.

Fact: 48 pinned 1114 for 34 seconds, without backing up by 3 feet for 3 seconds.

Fact: The head referee was not aware of the 3 feet for 3 seconds rule. Even though this was discussed at the driver's meeting. She actually had to look it up at the scorer's table.

Fact: The head referee said "how do I know your arm was any good", to our Coach and Driver

Those are the facts about many of the situations that have been disputed.

I don't want the ugly incident of this match to take away from the great play of Teams 67 and 1732. Both teams had amazing robots, and displayed a huge amount of class. Members of both teams actually apologized to us about the actions of team 48. This impressed me, and helped me remember why I do FIRST. Then again, I should have expected nothing less from a classy organization like the HOT team.

I'd like to personally thank every team and individual who came to us to express their concern and sympathies about the incident. Having the support of all of you helped our team's emotional psyche.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Karthik

[color=black]

Fact: Members of Team 48's driveteam, led by the Drive Coach, celebrated when 1114's arm snapped off. This was witnessed by myself, and numerous members of other teams. If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I would not believe it myself.

I saw this too (I was watching curie elims to support 330) and wasn't sure as to why they were chelebrating...

I am sure they were celebrating, but I can't for sure say that they were cheering because they broke 1114.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by FreedomForce

if you watch the video until the end, you will notice, that if there were 3 more seconds given on the field, we wouldn't be talking about this, instead we would be talking about how great of a team 1114 is, facing all that adversity and still able to lift MARS up.

How close they came was almost amazing, it just goes to show HOW GREAT 1114 really was.

also I wanted to know this, im trying to figure this out, but i couldn't find it anywhere, if that ringer that wasn't scored, if that counted, what would have been the final score, that also goes for the 469 descored ringer.

TIA

Neither the 1114 ringer, nor the 469 ringer would have changed the outcome on their own. If both had been scored it would have created a row of 6 for Blue for a final score of 64-30.

I was not at the Championships, so my comments will be contained to what can be found in the webcast footage.

From the webcast footage, their is not enough coverage of 1114's arm being removed to make any type of judgment on whether it was intentional or not.

The descoring of the ringer by 469 also cannot be seen clearly. When the camera cuts away 469 is still in possession of the tube and when it comes back the tube is being taken off the rack. It is not entirely clear, but it does look like the tube was released at some point and is being taken off from a different angle. I cannot be certain if the tube was fully clear of the 469 mechanism to qualify as a score, but judging by what I can see combined with accounts in this thread that do not appear to have been disputed, this ringer should have counted.

The 1114 ringer definitely looks to be supported by the stinger initially. The point that is not caught on the webcast is the final position of the ringer after being jostled by 469. You can see 469 hit the ringer as they descore their own, but you cannot see if this causes it to clear the stinger or not.