We were competing at the TSA/VEX National competition when we got disqualified for a match due to an “intentional” tipping call. However, the “intentional” tipping was caused due to a large ball I was attempting to descore, ended up knocking the other teams robot over. However the tipping of the robot would not have affected the match, and was purely unintentional and accidental.
Once the match was over, I was informed that the match was counted as a DQ. I attempted to talk to the referees about the issue, however they would not allow me to talk to a referee, and instead, made me talk to two representatives of TSA who did not see the match.
The referees, throughout the competition had to be informed about the rules multiple times, meaning the referees lacked the necessary experience to make correct calls.
This DQ did not just disqualify me from the single match, but for the entire competition.
I for one will not attend a TSA/VEX competition again.
Srry, but there are lots of calls that judges make that teams don’t like. I don’t think that you should just all out boycott tsa because of that. Also tsa is played different from vex at least in Oklahoma so the rulings will be different, and those refs probably don’t just sit down and go over the rules for hours like some of us robotics people.
Do I think you should have been dq’d no, but I don’t think that’s a reason to boycott tsa.
The DQ did not just disqualify us from a single match, but disqualified us for the entire competition. The team that we “intentionally” tipped also did the same thing on the next match they played against 383v (Lowndes Vikings) and were also disqualified. Also, the VEX games are created with the intent of having four robots on the field at once. TSA does 1 vs 1 which does not work properly.
I am not boycotting TSA. I am just not competing in the VEX competition in TSA.
Also, the only difference in rules between VEX and TSA is the 1 vs 1 format. The referees should also understand the rules of the game and take the time to read them, otherwise, they should not be a referee.
Normally, a single DQ would be unfortunate, however DQing from the whole tournament?! At a National Level?! That’s almost unforgivable, I don’t blame you for boycotting TSA. IMO a tournament DQ should be saved exclusively for something absolutely extreme, like cheating or something actually against the law.
I was thinking of signing my team up for TSA, but now I’m not so sure…
Also, working hundreds of hours on a robot, spending thousands of dollars, and travelling 1000 miles just to show up and be DQed by a Referee that has no idea what they’re doing is most certainly grounds to quit an organization.
The refs were giving warnings on this rule. At one of our matches both teams were playing a lot of defense, so after the match was over they explained the rule to prevent the dq. No one tipped over, so no one was dq’ed
To 4473B: Our team was watching the match in which you were disqualified. Therefor, I believe it is somewhat our responsibility to share some light on this situation. The matches in TSA are 1v1 and were setup in a bracket format with single elimination until the round of 16. You were disqualified from your match, not the tournament, but because you lost this match it means you also were eliminated from the tournament. It is important to remember you did not make it into the round of 16 yet so a single match DQ results in the same as an elimination from the tournament. As to the tipping call, I do agree with the Refs decision and the ruling of a DQ. The robot was not the most balanced robot in the world but the intent in which it was flipped in your match (as well as mine)was intentional. These things in VEX are very hard to call and harder to control being a driver. I accepted the referees ruling in my match because it was the correct call. My button lift caused my robot’s lift to continuously raise after the other robot was already falling back. It was not on purpose but it did affect the match and was the result of not killing the lift or backing away. The same goes for your team. You could have backed away and the other robot would not have flipped. The referees, I believe, were very informed of the rules throughout the competition and made the correct call on multiple situations(mentioned above). To suggest they did not have the necessary experience is simply false because one of the refs was from our state and was ref in multiple state tournaments as well as over 20 local tournaments. Before being a referee, the same guy was in VEX for four years and attended the World Championship all four. Experience is definitely there for one of the head refs. Now, about your statement on quitting TSA/VEX competitions, well this is your teams call. I for one was disappointed about my own DQ call but accepted the fate and competed in the third round and won easily. I understand our positions are not the same because you were in single elimination and I was not but life is simply not fair sometimes. I suggest doing better in both the skills events to have a better rank and get a bye all the way to double elimination to avoid a single elimination DQ’d match.
I for one wish VEX refs would be a little bit stricter with tipping calls. Too many times I’ve seen teams tip their opponents and get away with it, and then go on to win. After reading 383V’s post, it sounds like these refs were making good calls.
Quite often teams who tip their opponents haven’t broken the rules, or have broken the rules in ways that don’t justify disqualification. Only tipping that is intentional or egregious can get you disqualified. That doesn’t include tipping over a robot that was built to be really tippy anyway, and it usually won’t include accidentally tipping a robot that was trying to stop you from scoring or descoring (because of the following clause in the manual):
I agree with Mundi, I see many teams who have designed their robot properly with attention to a favorable center of gravity and/or anti tipping mechanisms get penalized because during a battle over a ball or goal, they stay stable while the robot with a tenancy to tip gets rewarded by having the opponent dq’d. Each situation is unique and sometimes very difficult to call, but in my opinion intentional tipping should be a rare call. For example, I saw a match at worlds in the Arts Division where two robots were going after a big ball and the blue alliance intake rollers caught on the red alliance robot. The blue alliance robot then raised their lift, causing the red alliance robot’s lift to raise. The red alliance robot tried to pull away and couldn’t, so it moved forward, thereby tipping the blue alliance robot. It was innocent driving, but looked bad and the red alliance got dq’d, especially after the blue alliance supporters screamed all about it. In the very next match, the same blue alliance robot tipped over all on its own, demonstrating it’s lack of attention to tipping, etc. If the game play is to have the robots interact, then stability should be part of the design parameters and care should be taken to only dq after intentional and egregious actions of the offending robots. In other words, as the vex rules read.
Incorrect rulings at nationals? Try at worlds. Yeah, ripped us out of the top 8 due to refs who couldn’t count properly, and same as in your situation, were unwilling to speak with me about the scenario. I completely know how you feel, if this truly was what you’re saying it to be. Extremely unfortunate.
I was one of the Ref’s that “Incorrectly” ruled you guys, their was time for you to react when almost tipping the other team and you didn’t, you are also forgetting the part where you came over to the ref table and began yelling and getting “Harsh” with us, the men/woman that were putting in so many hours to make this competition run semi-smoothly try their best to help you guys and Mrs. Proulx, who put on this event does not need bad rep from you guys, she is one of the hardest working RECF employes that you will ever encounter. But in all cases the rule of “Refs word is final,” can be used here, Nik made the final ruling, which in this case was the right one.
I’m going to have to agree with Tyler here, especially because of the main points he established. IMO, any credibility in complaints about being screwed at a tournament are completely lost when you start getting angry or malicious toward the event managers. They are there to help teams and ensure student success and really don’t need people yelling at them, especially when most of the refs and field scorers are volunteers.
Also, consider that in addition to working incredibly hard to put on these high profile events, Mrs. Proulx and Nik are also our program’s advisors and are helping us start our independent robot club completely anew, assisting us in finding a new lab, and helping us out with so much that they didn’t have to do at all if they didn’t want to, but they do anyway because they care about our success. Even without the obvious bias I have, the bottom line is that RECF employees wouldn’t be working for RECF if they didn’t want to help students succeed by putting on these events like the World Championship and Nationals, especially considering the logistics, extensive planning, money, and substantial amount of volunteers needed to make these events so great. Obviously it’s a huge letdown to show up to a tournament and get disqualified, but it should all be a learning experience, even if you feel like the event was to blame for the mishap. In this case, learning how to deal with adversity, outlined in <G16>.
Teams are expected to talk to refs if they think something was called incorrectly. If they’ve just been eliminated by a disqualification, of course they’re not going to be happy. As long as they don’t violate <G17> (and the threshold for that should be pretty high) then their conduct shouldn’t affect the ruling.
Part of being a good referee is being able to diplomatically handle the consequences of difficult calls, and often that means dealing with people who are angry at you. Of course if you’re a volunteer you aren’t required to be a good referee, but I still think it’s something people should stive for.
I completely agree with Tyler. Also, it’s one thing to complain among your team, but totally uncalled for to talk bad about the people running the event! If you wanted to question it, then would have been the time, not here giving TSA a bad rep.
Some time you just have to suck it up and go on. At worlds we had a match that we were pinned the whole time by 7090d and in the end the match didn’t count for them and we lost it. So we basically were denied the ability to win and lost because a team cheated and weren’t punished. We just went on with it. Turns out they went to the division finals. We were also stopped from repositioning our robot during autonomus after it tipped during autonomus. We just went on. Some teams have been to worlds and are use to winning sometimes forget that it isn’t always going to go your way.
