Central WA: The Best Worst Day Ever

[SciBorg Dave]

Does anyone know who won and what happen at the Central Washington Regional. I stayed for the finals but had to leave to get home Saturday night.
The final match was a good one with teams 360-2557-3789 winning by a very slim margin. But I see they have teams 753-1425-1983 as the winners.
Who won and why?

[Matthx]

The original match results that were revealed to the teams at the event were a score of 94-94, at which point the win was awarded to the blue alliance according to the tie-breaker rules in the rule book about foul points making it a 94-95 win for blue.

Further review of the scoring at the regional showed that red's score was miscounted by two, so after triple-checking that that was not in error the actual match score was found to be a 96-94 win for the red alliance, which was announced at the event some time later.

It was a really unfortunate series of events for the blue alliance that put a bit of a damping confusion on what was otherwise an incredibly energetic competition.

[MrJohnston]

It was a mess.... The last match was initially a tie and decided on the first tie breaker - awarding the win to the team with the fewest foul points (360 and co.). However, part way into the awards ceremony there was an announcement: a disk had been stuck in one of the goals, changing the outcome. Therefore the win was awarded to 1425 and their alliance. It was brutal all the way round.

[jason701802]

Today's post on the FRC Blog offers a pretty comprehensive recap: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...he-right-thing

I know that many on our team have expressed feelings of numbness about how the events unfolded. I hope that 360, 2557 and 3789 all have a chance to showcase their great robots at championships. We will not be attending championships and I wish we could give them our spot.

Full disclosure, I was not at the event, I was volunteering in Long Beach.

[SciBorg Dave]

How sad to have a new event, hurt by miss count.

[Kpchem]

Originally Posted by jason701802

I know that many on our team have expressed feelings of numbness about how the events unfolded. I hope that 360, 2557 and 3789 all have a chance to showcase their great robots at championships.

Sadly, that was the last event this year for each of those robots, so they will not be going to Championship this year.

Regardless of the outcome, those were some of the best finals matches I have ever watched, and I hope that the level of competition in Washington remains just as high in the coming years. Your team, as well as 1983 and 1425, should be proud of your victory, because you guys earned. Hopefully 360 gets to work with you guys at some point in the coming years

[Navid Shafa]

Is it just me, or did the threads get merged?

[Kpchem]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

Is it just me, or did the threads get merged?

They did, because there were two active threads talking about this and it's easier to have this all in one conversation.

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by Kpchem

They did, because there were two active threads talking about this and it's easier to have this all in one conversation.

Back up to 2 again: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=115475

[Bob Steele]

Believe me, we would love to have the honor of being on an alliance with either 360 or 2557. In the past two years we have been on opposite sides of the field in three finals.... Each of us has won a regional in these three events.
360 won at Portland last year, 2557 won in Seattle last year... and this year we came out ahead in Central Washington...

Interesting...If we could all be on the same alliance some time ....that would be pretty nice....

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

Interesting...If we could all be on the same alliance some time ....that would be pretty nice....

Yeah... except maybe for the poor buggers that you'd be playing against!

Looking forward to seeing the Skunkbot back at full capacity this weekend.

Jason

[CindyLouWhoMe]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

Interesting...If we could all be on the same alliance some time ....that would be pretty nice....

Well, world domination always seems to be an option...

[tatorscout]

Originally Posted by Kpchem

Sadly, that was the last event this year for each of those robots, so they will not be going to Championship this year.

Unfortunately you are right about 2557 and 360 who aren't going to any other regionals, but 3789 has another chance at Spokane. We are looking forward to seeing them at what's likely to be an amazing regional.

tatorscout

[Kpchem]

Originally Posted by tatorscout

Unfortunately you are right about 2557 and 360 who aren't going to any other regionals, but 3789 has another chance at Spokane. We are looking forward to seeing them at what's likely to be an amazing regional.

tatorscout

My apologies, I missed that when looking through the schedules. Best of luck in Spokane!

[Navid Shafa]

I would like to share with the CD community what Kevin Ross, the founding Chairman of FIRST WA had to say about the Central Washington Regional:


Kevin Ross
The Best Worst Day ever

Gracious professionalism is very easy when everything is going your way. When you are happy, GP is just the icing on the cake. GP is, however, only mastered when you can muster the strength to be gracious and professional in the face of extreme disappointment.

It is hard to imagine having a tough day at an FRC regional. It happened on Saturday in Ellensburg. Match three of the finals initially came up as a tie, and the tie breaker rule was used to give the win to the Blue Alliance. Almost immediately after announcing the win to the audience, it was discovered that a red Frisbee was incorrectly tallied, meaning that the Red alliance had actually won. The FTA’s, Referees, and Scorekeepers did extreme due diligence to insure that the new information was correct. In the end, the final decision was reversed and the Red Alliance was given the final victory.

Walking out with our MC Blair to inform the audience and the teams about this decision was by far the single worst thing I have ever had to do in the FIRST world. This was really going to be painful. Honestly, I was unprepared for what happened next.

The reaction from everyone in the room when the details were announced was so perfectly gracious professional, I don’t think I could have scripted it better in a bad after school movie. There were no outbursts, there were no stomped feet, there were no boos or cheers. There was a measured, thoughtful, and serene reaction to the news.

I don’t believe it is possible to be more proud of 50 teams of high school students who at once felt extraordinary empathy for their friends on the Blue Alliance ; of the 3 teams on the Red alliance who even though they had won the event by playing their game still offered to give up their win ; of the 3 teams on the Blue alliance who were suffering incredible disappointment yet acknowledged that it was the correct thing to do.

The one group that honored gracious professionalism the most, however, are the volunteers who initially missed the red Frisbee in the goal. Gracious Professionalism encompasses integrity and honesty. It took a lot of courage to initiate and come forward to admit this mistake and to work through the amazing range of horrific emotions that followed. They are working in the system they were provided by FIRST, and there was obviously a hole in the process for scoring.

The Red Alliance teams felt very bitter sweet and awkward in their win. I acknowledge that. I also ask them to let it go. The correct teams did win the event, and I applaud your teams not only for winning, but being so incredibly gracious and professional about the way that it happened. I can imagine any other high school sport where a incident like this would be followed with such grace.

So I leave this experience with an extraordinary appreciation of how the FIRST community can be unified in their grace and empathy for their competitors. We should all be extremely proud.