disaster in israel regional

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by keehun

Let's show Dean, Woodie, and rest of FIRST that we can handle minor hiccups like those that went down in Israel.

You call countless communication issues, teams only being able to play three official qualifying matches, elimination rounds decided on a coin toss, food being thrown at competitors and the use of racial slurs to be a "minor hiccup"? I'm all for looking for the positive in situations, but at a certain point we need to be realistic. I'd hate to ever see what it would take for you to call something a major hiccup. Elephants stampeding the field?

Gracious Professionalism is a two way street. 55 teams participated at the Israel Regional and from most descriptions, most of these teams handled the extreme adversity that was thrown at them with a lot of class. Despite the best efforts of the FIRST staff and local volunteers, the event sounds like it was a relative disaster. I'm not assigning blame here, but I'm just calling a spade a spade. The gracious and professional thing for FIRST to do is offer some sort of compensation or registration credit for all teams attending the event. Say I went to a restaurant and a water main blew, soaking myself and all the other customers. The graciously professional way for me to handle the situation would be to politely express my displeasure to the management and offer some help. The graciously professional response from the restaurant would be to refund my meal and offer me some sort of discount in the future. It's not something I would demand, but I sure would appreciate the olive branch.

Teams spent six long and hard weeks preparing for this event. 31 teams at this event only played 3 official matches. That's six minutes and forty-five seconds of robot action. For some people, this will be the only experience of their FIRST careers. At the end of the day do you really think it's appropriate to pat them on the back and say "Sorry, there's nothing we can do. At least you learned something about dealing with adversity!".

One possible solution to reward these teams. Perhaps there could be an "unofficial, yet official" off-season event this summer, where teams would play Breakaway with all the pomp and circumstance of an official regional. To top things off, grant qualification spots to winners to attend the 2011 World Championship. We clearly can't replay the 2010 Israel Regional, but maybe something like this would provide an avenue for these teams to get some level of redemption.