Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?

[Gary Dillard]

I wasn’t sure which thread to post this in, but I figured this was the most appropriate. For those who don’t know, I was a mentor with SPAM from their rookie season until 2006 and I was on stage in Einstein with them this weekend. Three of the current mentors on the team were students on the team when I was there, they have returned after college as professionals, and are shining examples of the best that FIRST has to offer. I am not going to say that I speak directly for them or any of our alliance, but I’d like to share some of my thoughts and emotions.
First, I think our sentiment is best summed up by the way Karthik and I greeted each other on stage at the end of the event. I said “We’re having kind of a tempered celebration” and he replied “I understand”. We would have replayed matches all night if necessary; when we were told we were replaying match 1, no one even batted an eye. We didn’t want to win this way, but it is what it is. We consider ourselves World Champions; we felt like we had an unbeatable alliance, but I’m sure the other division winners felt the same way. Although our celebration was somewhat muted, our loss of elation pales in comparison to what I’m sure the other division winners are feeling about what happened. After we lost the championship finals in the third match in 2002, I replayed that match over and over again in my head –if we had only done this or that we might have won. What are the Robonauts or the Pink team going to imagine that they might have done differently? My heart goes out to you.
As far as the OP’s question, I’d like to mention part of what the head ref Dr. Aidan Brown told the alliance captains before the final four started (as relayed to me by our team captain, so I’m not quoting and I don’t remember the exact words). He said this is a competition, but it is also a show. (He also told them to have fun). I fully understand this, and the show must go on, so some decisions for the benefit of FIRST and the ceremony had to be made at the expense of the competition. I think it was a lose – lose situation, and this was the best they could do. This could have been prevented long before Einstein, but that is a discussion for other threads which we have all been following all season. I saw one FTA in tears afterwards, and I know everyone involved was doing all they could. 10 years ago when we were on Einstein, it wasn’t part of the closing ceremonies; we just played in front of whoever was still there in the afternoon, and we could have replayed without much fanfare, and then the closing ceremonies were in the evening. When they switched to the current format, I thought it was fabulous and wished we could have had that experience in ’02. I still feel that way, so I guess this is the compromise we have to accept. Thankfully, a lot of the corporate leaders were at the division eliminations matches up close and got to experience the thrill of the competition, and hopefully their support will continue so that we can advance the mission of FIRST.
There were some discussions amongst the teams on stage about ways to make a public demonstration, including the winners declining to accept the championship and having all 12 teams go up as finalists. This discussion took place after the semi-finals and before the finals, so we didn’t know yet that we would be the winners (in fact, we knew we would be the red alliance and we were worried). I went back and forth on it, weighing the need for a statement versus the ramifications to FIRST. Our alliance wasn’t unanimous in what to do, so we decided to just accept the results and proceed as normal.
As far as having the teams go to IRI and play it off (and I haven’t talked to anyone on SPAM about this, but it’s just my 2 cents), if you’d like to write the $10,000 check to SPAM for them to travel, and cover the mentor’s lost wages for another 2-3 days missed at work, maybe they’ll be able to get the paperwork through the school system in the month they have remaining to allow an out of state / after school is out trip to take place. I’ve only been able to make to IRI once, when my daughter wanted to visit Purdue as a possible college and we made the trip coincide with IRI. The rest of the time I have a real job and a family that I like to spend time with and work to do around the house to catch up on from the 2-3 months I neglect it during build and competition season. Not that the team wouldn’t love to attend IRI (for all I know they already had it in this year’s plan and budget), but it doesn’t just happen on the spur of the moment.
Finally, thank you for the respectful and courteous way that this discussion has taken place; pretty much everyone has caveated their comments with “not taking away anything from 16,25,180”, etc., and that means a lot. FIRST is a big family and we‘ll get through this together.