[J-Blondie]

Don't get me wrong, I think winning is just as nice and it's great if your team has that goal. I enjoy winning as much as the next person. The problem I have is when people DON'T win and then try to find every excuse for why they didn't win. My point is that not everyone can win, and while it's fine to make that your goal, when you don't win don't be negative about it. I know it's expensive and I know that the kids want to win and so do mentors.

I feel like maybe the amount of exposure to the attitude of negativity is growing, but I feel like the negativity has grown in the past couple years as well. It seems that now because most everyone has to win to get to world championships that the need to win has kind of flared negativity. It's fine to express what was wrong with the season, but I think it's better to do so constructively than to just rant about what went wrong while having no plausible solution to how things can improve. It would be great if teams who were affected by mistakes or calls could try and see how it would be easier for referees to make better calls or make the job easier for them at least. Referee training and all of the volunteer training can be intimidating, even if you've been on a FIRST team.

I don't volunteer for FRC because I'm usually helping my team, but I have judged the project for FLL regionals for 3 years or so. It's extremely intimidating to read the information packet. And it's hard knowing that you have the hopes of teams and their fate in your hands, especially if you have way more deserving teams than awards, and you always do. I sure wouldn't want to be an official having to make a split second decision based on events I saw in a match while I'm being pressured to not delay the regional to carefully review every happening. I'm sure it's stressful. While many mistakes could have been avoided, it's all in the past now. FIRST is not going to review every match where mistakes were made and discuss with every team what the problems they had were, that's just a fact of reality, but I have confidence that they will work to resolve things that they do have the power to fix the best that they can. All I'm asking is that we ask for changes and try to have enough compassion as a whole to understand that bad things happen and that there's always the opportunity to move on and learn from it.