2009 BAE Granite State Regional

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

I will echo everyone's sentiments and note that this was a poorly run regional.

Everything Amanda has said is true. All of the volunteers (besides Verizon employees) were nice people. When you try to slip something by all the veteran teams at this event, we are going to notice. The teams have spent 8 weeks immersed in this game and now it inside and out. Some of the volunteers seemed like they just started reading the rules this past Wednesday. This could be because almost all volunteers were BAE employees.

The first year of the Boston Regional was more professional than this weekends event (BAE Regional has been around for 7 years now). At times, it felt more like a scrimmage than an FRC Regional.

These are my points coming from a drive team coaches point of view:

• Pit Setup - The pits were completely out of order. No rhyme or reason to how they were set up. Made alliance strategy sessions and pit scouting a nightmare. Please put teams in order.
• Announcer - Please pair up new announcers with veterans. I know Andy Grady was helping his team and saving his voice for Boston. But, there are many other veterans in the area that could have helped. The webcast is hard enough to watch without a good announcer. Although the announcing did get much better.
• Rules - Having to argue with queuers about were human players and robots can start was a headache. This was figured out by Friday morning though.
• Alliance Picking Redo - When multiple teams are telling you the rankings are wrong, please take the 5 minutes to double check. Don't let the picking happen, let teams have half an hour to eat lunch and make a strategy, then decide to redo picking. Also teams had absolutely no time to prepare for a second round of picking. The top 8 changed and teams were unprepared. Unacceptable.
• Scoring System/Rankings - Teams have made Excel spreadsheets more solid than the current scoring and ranking system. No excuse for this.
• Field Control - Multiple teams experienced matches when their Auto modes did not run. Matches were decided because teams sat there and got their trailers filled.
• No Comms - When a whole alliance loses communication 30 seconds into a match, kill the match and replay ASAP. Do not play out the match, score it, and then redo it.
• DJ/Music - Nicest guy. Played what teams wanted to hear during their matches. The YMCA and other line dance songs were saved for down times and not overplayed.

I know that is alot of gripes but they need to be said to hopefully improve the regional for next year. For many New England teams, this was their only event for 2009.