A Series of Unfortunate Events

[Akash Rastogi]

Freshman year in 07 we went to the NYC regional. Things were going really well for us when we were selected as the overall 2nd pick. When the 2nd round came by, the next selection was another ring scorer.

We did awesome in the QF's. Won our first SF match with a decently large margin. Then the second match almost right in the beginning, our human player threw a tube onto our flag. We couldn't remove it and we couldn't keep scoring for it would incur a rather large multitube holding penalty. We play defense and wait to just climb the ramps of 522, our alliance captain. We climb the ramps, we are cheering like mad because we think we are in the finals. We then see a referee huddle, and are not happy. The refs make a call that the RAMP we were on, was somehow supported at the bottom by a tube. We took a snapshot of this claim and hushed up not arguing with them (we don't argue calls). We figure if we really deserve to win, we'll win the next match. In the first seconds of teleop in SF match 3, our human player once again, scores a ring on our flag. Needless to say, being the main tube scorer on our alliance, we lost that match. The opposing alliance- a team we started and mentored lol 1302.

We showed the picture and match video to the NJ refs the next day, their call: we would have gotten the bonus points if they had been making the call. Being the honorable team they are, 1302 came over to our pit after winning the regional and gave our human player one of their medals, it was his senior year. Its one of the reasons I love mentoring teams, you get to see what nontechnical things they learned from you.

C'est la vie.

Match vids on TBA Semifinals NYC- http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/team/11/2007