Mt. Olive 2014 Footage and Match Length Issue

[Hallry]

As most of you probably know, the 2014 Mount Olive MAR District Event took place two weekends ago as a Week 1 Competition. Though I’m sure most of you have heard about the drama that took place on the field, which was completely out of the control of the hosts, other than that it was a very well-ran event held by FRC Team 11, who actually had to hold back-to-back events with hosting the NJ FLL State Championships at their high school as well this past weekend.

Some of you may have been told that I’ve been holding back the full-field footage recorded at Mt. Olive due to an ‘issue’ I noticed. Since it has now been over a week and FIRST has yet to make any official mention of it, and it seems that they’re not going to, and now that most of the controversy from the event has died down, I figured I would take the charge of informing the FRC community, especially the MAR community, of what some may say is a pretty substantial error that occurred. Do I want to cause any more disputes from posting this? Not at all. Do I wish that FIRST would have addressed this issue publicly? Absolutely. But do I believe that the community deserves to be told about what happened? Yes,

When I got back to my dorm on the Sunday night of Mt. Olive and was uploading and reviewing the videos of the matches, I soon noticed that the videos recorded later on were shorter than those from earlier in the event. At first I thought that this was due to human or camera error on the recording side, but then realized that some of the matches were shorter than they were supposed to be. In fact, every match, both qualification and elimination, was 20 seconds too short in teleoperated mode, beginning in the reset of Qualification Match 31. (If you're wondering why the replays of matches 8, 30, and eventually 31 are also too short, that's because they were played at the end of the day on Saturday). This means that about 70% of the matches were too short: Instead of having 10 seconds of autonomous mode and 140 seconds of teleop, they had 10 seconds of autonomous and only 120 seconds of teleop. After seeing this, I immediately notified one of the refs from the event, who notified the FTA, who was going to notified FIRST. I also sent my own email to FIRST via the FRCteams email, but have not received any response, even after their ‘maximum response time of 48 hours.’

How did this happen and how did no one notice? Well, I don’t know how it happened, but I am guessing it involved something with the field clock when match 31 had to be stopped midway and then reset. What is quite odd is that not long before the error started, the FTA double-checked with one of the refs to make sure that the match length was correct, and it was. As for how did no one notice - Well, if you were at the competition, or even watching via webcast, I’m sure you know that there was A LOT going on during the eliminations. But, how did no one notice before the eliminations on Sunday or even later on during the first day of competition on Saturday? People are used to it being 120 seconds of teleop. The last time teleoperated mode wasn’t 120 seconds was way back in 2004, when matches were 120 seconds total, with a 15 second autonomous and 105 second teleop. With Mt. Olive being one of the earliest competitions of the 2014 season, I’m sure people were more concerned with other possible issues, and weren’t focused on something as simple as the length of the matches. Additionally, the schedule on Saturday was changed to go later in the evening and play 70 qualification matches so that Sunday would finish before the snow arrived. I would guess that most people just wanted the matches, and the day, to be over, and I’d also bet that some people even forgot that the matches were supposed to be longer than in past years, simply due to not being accustomed to it.

Now, what should be done about this? Well, what could be done about it? While Section T16 of the 2014 Game Manual states “If, in the judgment of the Head Referee, an “ARENA fault” occurs that affects the outcome of the MATCH, the MATCH will be replayed.”, with the blue box underneath is stating “ARENA faults include broken FIELD elements, power failure to a portion of the FIELD (tripping the ciruit breaker in the PLAYER STATION is not considered a power failure), improper activation of the FMS, errors by FIELD personnel, etc.”, it would be impossible to replay all of the matches that were affected. Could an extra 20 seconds have changed the outcome of some of the matches? Absolutely. Might some people that lost be mad that they maybe could’ve won with an extra 20 seconds? Sure. But, was missing the 20 seconds unfair to all of the teams? Eh, maybe not so much. Sure, maybe some teams had one more/less shorter qualification matches than others due to their schedule, but it’s not like one alliance had a longer time to score in a match compared to the other alliance. And, all of the elimination matches were the same (shorter) length as well. Honestly, I don’t have any suggestions of what to do, other than to say “Sorry, someone/something made a mistake somewhere”, and just to make sure it doesn’t happen again. How can people be angry at others for this happening, when they themselves didn’t even notice it?

With that, I have made all of 1676’s footage from the 2014 Mt. Olive MAR District public, and can be found in this playlist. Unfortunately, we had to switch to using a different camera for the end of the elimination matches, so we are still working on locating and uploading Semifinal matches 2-2 and 2-3, both Final matches, and the Award Ceremony. I’m doing my best to find those recordings and get them up A.S.A.P.

And lastly, to all of the people I overheard hastily saying “We won’t be attending the Mt. Olive District next year”: Really? I promise you that if you held a Week 1 Event, the same field errors could have happened to you. Did M.O.R.T. make the pedestal not light up for you? No. Did M.O.R.T. make your robot lose connection to the field? No. Did M.O.R.T. make all of the matches 20 seconds too short? No. Did M.O.R.T. have any control of what happened on the field? Not at all. But did M.O.R.T. host a great event otherwise? Yes. I got the chance to talk to 11’s head coach Mr. Bodmer very briefly towards the end of Sunday, and he was just as annoyed with the problems that were happening as I was, if not even more so (and that’s saying something, I was pretty annoyed). I would like to thank M.O.R.T. for volunteering to hold a Week 1 competition knowing that things most likely wouldn’t go perfectly, and will gladly tell anyone who decides not to attend their district next year that they’ll be missing an awesome event.

My soapbox’s worn out, so I’ll leave it at that. I’ll be attending the Clifton MAR District this coming weekend, and will be sure to keep a close eye on the field clock throughout the competition to ensure that it’s correct, and would suggest some others to do the same at your own respective events, just in case. If other people more knowledgeable than myself want to offer suggestions of what exactly might have happened or what should/could be done about it, feel free. Maybe if we all start carrying around classy pocketwatches that could fix the problem….or sundials?

Sincerely,
Ryan Hall

And as a public statement to everyone in MAR, which I unfortunately feel the need to say after some of the events that unfolded: Play Nice.