Unfortunately I don’t have video of this, so hopefully someone else who was at the Colorado Regional can vouch for the validity of this story.
On practice match day at CODE, 159 was all ready and inspected before lunch so we joined the filler line for the practice matches. There was a miscommunication between the people queuing and the field management people. 159 was supposed to play in practice match 6 but because of the mix-up we were disabled and told to wait till practice match 7. We were all set up on the field, and our pilot was in the airship, so now we just had to wait.
That’s when it happened, a red alliance robot quickly received a gear from the feeder station… and then drove to the blue alliance airship!! :ahh: The red airship didn’t have lift springs on it yet because field setup was behind schedule, the blue airship did, so the obvious(?) choice was to place gears on the blue airship. Although it might have been a surprise, our pilot was ready! He lifted that gear right up into the airship in triumph! (And then dropped it but oh well… :p)
I think I can safely say that the pilot for team 159 is the only pilot to have ever received gears from an opposing alliance, as well as the only pilot to receive gears when not actually competing in a match.
The key word is “practice”. There are a lot of things that happen during practice matches that wouldn’t happen normally. Usually it’s robots with wrong bumper colors. In previous years I’ve even seen drive coaches toss game pieces over the side so the drives could get practice. In 2005 the entire drive team came out to pile high tetras on their robot, with signs on their backs (facing the audience) “We know this is not legal!”
They just want you to practice. Early enough in the day there wouldn’t be refs - one of the resetters would get put in to press the ref’s tablet buttons. Towards the end of the practice rounds it gets a little more regular.
By the way, that’s a good driver to be able to aim at a peg from way across the field.
I’ve refereed at a lot of events, and the referees are usually just as eager as the teams to get some practice before it counts! Our district runs all the practice matches with full referee crew. (Sure, things will be different at Championship where we’ve got plenty of prior experience.)
They are usually not as early as us reset crew for practice I know, for some of them it may be their first competition and it’s practice for everyone. The point being it is a little looser the early practice matches.
I know, for some of them it may be their first competition and it’s practice for everyone. The point being it is a little looser the early practice matches.