[iblis432]

I would just like to remind everyone the importance of scouting. Our team usually does very poorly, and usually doesn't move on to elimination rounds. This year hit us by surprise and threw us into eliminations. As the captain and representative of the team, I stood in line and asked a fellow team mate to fetch me the scout data and what teams we would want. A few minutes later he returned with a two inch thick pile of unsorted papers. Many of the pages were blank with only team numbers on them, some even had pictures drawn over the area where score data was to be recorded. Only a select few had any useful data on them, and when I got with our alliance leader I discovered even that data was incorrect. When I returned to the team and asked about it, the seemingly unanimous response was that it was too difficult to understand the scouting sheets, and/or they didn't really try because they didn't think we would win.

I will admit I use to feel the same way about scouting, but it is clear as day to me now that scouting is an important element that should be utilized by all teams, not just the teams that consistently get chosen year after year.