Quote:
Originally Posted by Hallry
I've been debating whether or not to post on this thread since I saw it last night. Here it goes.
Anyone that knows me has heard me be captious of certain aspects of both FIRST and MAR multiple times. But something I would never do is openly bash the abilities and efforts of the volunteers.
Why? Because we're all human. We all make mistakes, we all have bad days. Just remember, the refs, judges, field crew, literally everyone at the competition, both on the front line and behind the scenes, are gracious donating their time for you. If you ever think that a volunteer is purposely not putting their all into their job, you're wrong. You just competed at a Week 1 competition, you can't expect everything to go smoothly right out of the gate. But I have no doubt that those in charge are already tirelessly working to make things better. And you should be both respectful and thankful for that.
It's fine to be angry/annoyed/upset, but you can't fault anyone for being fallible.
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Well said, Ryan.
I'm a proud Volunteer Coordinator since 2009, serving FIRST Mid-Atlantic since '14. Volunteers across the world for FIRST are excellent and work really dang hard at their jobs - and MAR is no exception... but we are all human. Do bad things happen? Absolutely, and it's not wrong to talk constructively about solutions. But the crews that I've worked with here are consistently hard-working, diligent, and professional. Insulting them instead of working towards a fix is not going to help anyone.
Everyone is human, and it's each of our jobs as a graciously professional human being to make sure that when things go wrong we handle them with grace. The heat of competition can make things get ugly quickly. I'll freely admit I was probably prickly this weekend when referees called things incorrectly - but I also understand that going to a Week 1 event means it's going to be a learning experience for us all...
yes, even the event officials.
Remember your Head Ref hadn't seen Stronghold played yet either.
It was absolutely disappointing to hear a ref say "It's a grey area, I couldn't see who initiated contact" when we were hit by an opponent, while traversing our opponent's outer works, & penalties weren't called. My drivers know that's not how G43 works, but the ref our corner of the field didn't. My student stood in the box with the manual and read it with them, and still nothing happened.
It sucks to miss a breach (and the ranking point) by one crossing, to which (a different) ref shrugs and says "Sorry, I must have not seen it, I was focusing on something else, but I'm not changing the score."
I totally get it. Things like that can really sour an event experience.
But the answer to this isn't "Why does [event, region, person, whatever] suck?" it's "How do we make this better?"
Personally, my thought was adding scorekeepers whose only jobs are to watch the Defense crossings, while the refs manage robot-contact. It's something I'm planning on bringing up to the Volunteer Resources folks at HQ on our call - that's the whole point of the weekly reviews for VCs. I'm also suggesting that Refs (not just the head referees) be required to review the Q&A and understand how important or controversial questions might come into play during the upcoming week.
One of the things VCs strive for with all our volunteers is to make sure that they understand the event is about making sure students have a consistent, positive, engaging experience. Even just this weekend, I've had overwhelmingly fantastic experiences with volunteers and event staff - from the way 11's parents & mentors helped us with
two Sunday-morning crises, to the rockstar FTA's Kevin and Josh lending us a laptop at the last possible second before a match so we didn't have to get bypassed.
Volunteers are there to make sure teams & attendees have the best experience possible, and so many of them excel at it.
We're all human, and there are incidents where the mark gets missed - there's no denying that. Let's work together on making things better rather than creating more tension.