Hawaii Regional 2008

[Lavapicker]

When you're laying down across the field blocking the entire lane as they were you're going to get hit in places you don't want. I'm just stressing that the initial hits were bumper to bumper. We were accused of hitting above the bumper and I can assure you our arm system would have bent to pieces before it pushed another bot over and was in no way used to tip anyone. Fact is that 233 was kind of tippy. They would rock quite a bit. Like I said in another post, we were hit broadside while carrying a ball in the semi's and went over for the first time in two tournaments and we're quite stable. BTW, We asked 233 about their arm after the tipping match and they said it was just fine. It was a monster like their entire bot. You've got to build your bot for contact. Poofs rammed us good at the end of the third match and knocked a pwm cable out and killed a motor. As rough as it looked to folks in the stands it was going both ways and we weren't crying over it...neither did I hear drive teams from either side complaining.
As for calls...I agree there appeared to be some small overlooked ones but the matches played and were ultimately determined like I think they were supposed to be. I think the ref's in Hawaii did an overall excellent job! I questioned one about a few obvious ones and he said they wanted to call but saw the same thing on both sides so decided to make it a no call. In SVR you had both teams in the challenge box after every single match trying to figure out what wasn't and was called...it was a pure mess. It was extremely frustrating to watch and play and was worse yet, inconsistant. In Honolulu the calls were very consistant and fair in my opinion....and we didn't win!! We sure had a blast though! Aloha,