[cmrnpizzo14]

Frank, as always thank you.

I love reading these blog posts because Frank and all of FIRST are usually very good about addressing the problems in a timely but not hurried manner. Here is my take on the issues.

Bounce-Outs: Glad they are fixed. I understand that this was in the official drawings and teams could have planned for this but Frank said it best when he said that FIRST was supposed to be challenging but not frustrating. This was a small piece on the field that no one should really have had to worry about. I think this will help improve the fluidity of the game too. It is already hard to score under heavy defense, no need to make it harder.

Fouls: Good call by making it a little more lenient but not making the penalty lighter. Judging from some teams, a little practice makes following these rules fairly easy. This update made it easier to follow the letter and spirit of the rule and also should help improve gameplay.

Refs: about the best they can do right now. Ref's have a hard job. Everyone just needs to remember that the ref's are trying their best, calls will be missed and that often things from your point of view may seem ok but a referee has been trained to objectively look from the side and probably can see more of the event better than you can.

Balls being returned to the field: I'm glad that the balls are still being returned to the human players, but I wish that there were balls on hand so that the volunteers did not have to run down a ball and waste time but could just grab a ball from next to them, pass it to the human player and then go get the other one.

Let's hope this leads to a better week 2 and a great season!