Nor Cal Middle School States Illegal Pinning

RANKTEAMNAMEW-L-T(WPs/SPs)
1.#6CCyber Phoenix8-0-0(16 / 216)
2.#6845ERoboStangs E6-2-0(12 / 120)
3.#8000CHRS Robohawks5-3-0(10 / 194)
4.#7233AQuarry Lane Cougars5-3-0(10 / 160)
5.#9537Stanley FatMax5-3-0(10 / 121)
6.#4768Grizzly Bots4-4-0(8 / 182)
7.#5772Eaglebots4-4-0(8 / 171)
8.#4768FGrizzly Bots4-4-0(8 / 169)
9.#4768DGrizzly Bots3-5-0(6 / 171)
10.#4768BGrizzly Bots3-5-0(6 / 163)
11.#5297ADalex3-5-0(6 / 150)
12.#6845ARoboStangs A3-5-0(6 / 128)
13.#4768CGrizzly Bots2-6-0(4 / 174)
14.#4768EGrizzly Bots1-7-0(2 / 161)

How did an eleventh place team win the excellence award. 5297A were pinning multiple times during the qualification matches for more than 5 seconds even during quarter finals. They were also not called on it by the ref’s during the multiple qualification matches.

Well being top 8 is only 1 point in the excellence scoring.

Also if they were pinning for longer than 5 seconds they would have been warned. If they weren’t warned that would mean the refs didn’t believe it constituted as pinning. Also nothing about even being warned for pinning would even hurt a team in excellence decision making. Remember defensive play is part of the game. Look at some of 2915C’s matches at worlds last year and how they won worlds.

If you would like to have a conversation about how you think excellence award should be reworked than we as a community would love to hash out with you what we think would be a good alternative system but if you just want to try to complain about a match that none of us saw please do so off of this forum.

Are you sure what they were doing is considered pinning? For example, I think I heard that a robot could “pin” an opponent up against the cube pile and yet still not be officially considered pinning.

Actually, I was there the refs were really inexperienced.

  1. Connections on the field was clearly intermittent, no replays allowed
    due to time.
    Clearly kids had their hands up saying controllers didn’t work.
  2. One match won was miscalculated
    13:54 4768F 6845E 6845A 4768D
    21 16
    6845A 4768 D won auto and scored more than 16 in the match
    we went right after and asked they refused to look at it
    changing the ranking
    One guy that was a ref at another competition promised to volunteer next year
    he said not just pinning …
    Bottom line we need more experienced refs to volunteer for State Events

A team does not have to be in the top 8 to win Excellence. My team, 1138, was ranked 27th at the SoCal State Champs, we also had 5 no shows to matches due to our robot having a countless amount of problems, but it was out notebook and out judges presentations that won the judges over, and that is how we won the Excellence award.

A notebook and good interview will go a long way, but on their own, according to VEX’s Awards manual, these things only count toward Design and other judged awards. The “All-around top team” at a tournament must be able to make their robot work well enough to compete in its matches, or at least bounce back to the finals if the early part of the tournament was rough, and needs to do well in Skills.

Not having been there, there’s no way I can know the exact circumstances, but I would say this kind of situation is unlikely to happen at most competitions, especially at high level ones.

That said, nice job! Your documentation must have been very impressive to pull off an Excellence Award from 27th place. I’ll be sure to stop by your pit at Worlds!

I do agree that this is very rare, my team was actually giving up on our chances to getting to Worlds.

Come stop by our pit, we will be glad to meet you.