Curie Semifinal 1 - 3, what happened?

[Adam McLeod]

For those of you who are curious, and I know many of you are, here's a link to footage of Curie Semifinal 1 - 3, in which 1114, 469 and 1523 are eliminated.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?doc...23692796016767

Notice that 1114 is pinned for about 30 seconds, then driven into (hard) while their arm is tangled in the rack by team 48. Of course, the arm snaps in half, which is to be expected from what seems to me to be an intentional decision to do just that.

Note that there was a ten point penalty in this match for pinning, and no penalty at all for anything else.

[Beth Sweet]

Wow, that's... interesting

It appears that as soon as 1114's arm was in a precarious position, it was pushed until the arm popped from the socket. What a terrible event to take such a wonderful alliance out of their chance on Einstein...

[Alex Cormier]

Well, i am not surprised about how long it took for someone to make a whole thread about this. I am disapointed in the reactions of individuals not on either team on how they are reacting to this and what thier thoughts are. I have talked to mentors on both teams and they feel bad at what happened and frustrated. I have sent out a few PM's to other people about thier posting of this issue. I have grecieved anything from i agree with you too, forget you i have my thoughts and im stubborn i don't like them anymore.

But i do ask one thing, please no bashing of one team becuase of what happended and thinking a team is no longer GP and is horrible and such. Would your grandmother be proud of how this discussion is going about? Atleast, i know my grandmother would be proud in what i am trying to do.

It seems every year there is one heated discussion about a little event such as this one every year. Hopefully one of these eyars this will stop. It's just a game, it's for HS'ers to learn, get out of the house, better prepare themselves for college and life, see a diffrent side of science and technology. This is not a wrestling league, so act like civil people and treat others the way you would like to be treated.

[PandaMan]

I agree that we should keep this discussion as civil as possible. From the video it is quite apparent that 1114 was caught up on the rack and that they were unable to move backwards and free themselves (we can see that 48 has more pushing in this scenario). 48's continuous pushing of 1114's robot is questionable. Therefore only 48's drive team can truly tell us what happened.

Aside from the actual breaking of the arm, I would also like to know why this tube wasn't counted as scored?

[Andy Baker]

OK, there may need to be a traffic cop in place on this one...

I'll warn everyone right now, keep your emotions in check on this thread. We don't need any "I hear that this happened, yada yada". Keep your own credibility, tact, and dignity in place by only posting only what you must. If you did not see anything first hand, then your account of what happened won't be worth much.

Tread carefully,
Andy B.

[xzvrw2]

wow
i am shocked about how this match was called.
the arm was still connected to the ringer also.
now the arm is completly off of 1114s robot.
the refs counted that the ringer that was scored was apart of 1114s robot because their arm was hanging there on it.
i will say no more.
there are some people on a team that frequently gets this done to that dont want to go tonationals anymore.

[jgannon]

Several people have already said this, but I really don't think we're going to get anywhere worthwhile with the discussion of whether this play was too aggressive. However:

Originally Posted by xzvrw2

the refs counted that the ringer that was scored was apart of 1114s robot because their arm was hanging there on it.

This seems to me to be a huge mistake. This Q&A response indicates that 1114's arm was a field element by the end of the match, so if the tube was HANGING (which it looks to be doing), then it ought to have counted. Was the ruling really that the tube was still in 1114's possession?

[xzvrw2]

Originally Posted by jgannon

Several people have already said this, but I really don't think we're going to get anywhere worthwhile with the discussion of whether this play was too aggressive. However:

This seems to me to be a huge mistake. This Q&A response indicates that 1114's arm was a field element by the end of the match, so if the tube was HANGING (which it looks to be doing), then it ought to have counted. Was the ruling really that the tube was still in 1114's possession?

yes the ruling was that the tube was apart of 1114s robot therefore not scored.

[BRosser314]

Ive had some bad experiences with FIRST and wrong decisions or wrong calls, but i feel that Curie field was really possesed, not only in out match, but as Freenchie said even in the finals with Hot and ELITE

[Joel J]

I'm on 1114's side on this one.. not only because of the fatality suffered by their robot, but because of how consistently poor the calls were by the refs this weekend. I don't know.. 229 partially suffered from a few bad calls (scored ringers not counting, tipped alliance partners not resulting in any form of penalization, etc), but nothing really that compares to what I witnessed in the divisional eliminations as I walked around.

I'm speechless this year.

No one could have predicted how nationals turned out this year, AND FOR GOOD REASON.

The referees decisions are final-- and that has been shown by the record books, but I'll just have to say their POWER in these situations does not strongly correlate with their ABILITY to ensure that these finals calls are just-- that is, inline with what has been written in the rules.

This whole year has been weird, and I must say that I'm glad its over.

[Frenchie]

Originally Posted by Joel J.

I'm on 1114's side on this one.. not only because of the fatality suffered by their robot, but because of how consistently poor the calls were by the refs this weekend. I don't know.. 229 partially suffered from a few bad calls (scored ringers not counting, tipped alliance partners not resulting in any form of penalization, etc), but nothing really that compares to what I witnessed in the divisional eliminations as I walked around.

I'm speechless this year.

No one could have predicted how nationals turned out this year, AND FOR GOOD REASON.

The referees decisions are final-- and that has been shown by the record books, but I'll just have to say their POWER in these situations does not strongly correlate with their ABILITY to ensure that these finals calls are just-- that is, inline with what has been written in the rules.

This whole year has been weird, and I must say that I'm glad its over.

I am sorry to say that I agree. FIRST Teams are asked to be more and more professional as the years come by, and yet the infrastructure itself remains very amateurish. Maybe we should try and work out the few glitches that remain before trying to mass export a beta product.

Francois.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Frenchie

FIRST Teams are asked to be more and more professional as the years come by, and yet the infrastructure itself remains very amateurish.

The relevant infrastructure here is composed of amateurs. They're volunteers. To provide a consistently professional infrastructure would require professionally-paid workers, professional-quality training, and ongoing professionally-supervised evaluations. I doubt increasing the fees paid by teams to cover these costs would go over well.

As FIRST grows, teams are increasingly demanding better service. Can't it instead be that the teams can increasingly provide what they want FIRST to have? With more teams and more involvement, there ought to be a correspondingly higher pool of enthusiastic and capable volunteers.

A challenge to those of you grumbling about the refereeing this year: Be a referee next year. If you don't take some responsibility for improving the situation, try not to be upset if it doesn't change to your liking.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

A challenge to those of you grumbling about the refereeing this year: Be a referee next year. If you don't take some responsibility for improving the situation, try not to be upset if it doesn't change to your liking.

I'd like to be a referee. Unfortunately, all of the events in my area aren't very fond of college folks having ref spots. Or maybe its just me.

[Liz Smith]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

I'd like to be a referee. Unfortunately, all of the events in my area aren't very fond of college folks having ref spots. Or maybe its just me.

Well, I don't know exactly where you've been trying to referee, but I'm a Sophomore in college and I this year I refereed at 2 regionals (Pittsburgh and NYC) as well as at the Championship Event.

In my opinion, in response to people questioning the referees consistancy, the referees spent most of Thursday at the Championship discussing the rules and the minor details of the game. The head referees spent even longer discussing each and every rule. The referees in this competition are not oblivious to the controversies the come up within the game.

Now, on being informed of the rules. What you think may be inconsistancies with calls, may just be you just not knowing the rules of the game well enough. Besides the referee meeting, there was the drivers meeting at the championship, where the referees and the drivers discussed certain rules and how the calls were going to be made at the event. The drivers meeting answered all the questions that the drivers from the teams in all the divisions had. Unless you were at that entire drivers meeting, I don't think you have a fair say in how a play should have been called. I don't know what makes some of you think that you can trash the referees, maybe its because you think that unlike teams, they don't read CD.. but they do, and maybe you should be a little more careful about what you say about the referees.

[Tom Line]

While I wasn't involved - I did want to point something out. I watched that video - perhaps with a slightly different viewpoint than many people.

The referees went into the match had no special warning of where to watch. They had no advance notice that something major and very controversial might occur. As such, you and I are far, far more prepared to try to evaluate what happened. Especially since we have a very small section of the field to watch - we are watching a single robot for the whole match. That is the beauty of hindsight. We also have the wonderful ability of instant replay. How many of you simply watched that video once and drew your opinions from that? Because that ALL the referees had to go from - and worse, they were watching the whole field. Not 10 square feet of it.

So I watched it once. And only once. Here is what I saw.

1114 grabbed a ringer and then went to score while being defended. The other robot (48) was trying to push them around. At several points I, with my referee hat on, became concerned that the pinning was going on too long. In each instance, I saw 48 back away from 1114. Instead of turning, or any other type of maneuver, 1114 backed up with them. Were they off for three seconds? Hard to say, in my "only watched the video once" eye. I didn't have a stopwatch going. As I doubt the refs did. I DO know that 1114 was continually trying score.

But I DID see 48 back off - several times. Whether they did so for 1.5 seconds or 4.5 seconds is truly in the eye of the beholder. During the actual match, I'm sure 1114 was screaming they'd been pinned (their team member near the camera was screaming pin well before 10 seconds were up) while I'm sure team 48 was counting a little more slowly...1....2.....3.... I see several people saying 1114 was pinned the whole time. No they weren't. They continued contact with 48 when 48 backed off. That is not 48's fault, and does not constitute a continuing pin count.

It's the nature of competition. Team 1114's arm was broken. At the point where it was broken, 48 and 1114 were still moving forward. As such, it's very difficult for a ref to say they were pinned - you'd have to realise the entire situation of their arm being stuck. I know I had trouble seeing it. Did 48 know it was going to break as they pushed 1114? I sincerely, sincerely, doubt it. I see quite a few people here drawing judgements from their emotions rather than rationality.

I saw a hard fought match, which upon replay presented some questionable acts. In the heat of the moment, without replay or hindsite, and with the whole field to look at, I suspect I would have made the exact same decisions as the referees.