Quote:
Originally Posted by Citrus Dad
The tension over seat saving will continue until FIRST recognizes that scouting is an integral part of the competition and the scouts need the same level of treatment as pit and drive crews. No one would agree that if a team leaves a pit to go to a match that another team can move in and take it over. Being able to seat scouts together is critical to competitive success.
FIRST also encourages seat saving through its "spirit award" which is often given to the team with the largest coherent cheer squad. FIRST needs to decide which conflicting objective is more important.
I believe FIRST needs to come up with a sensible policy on seat allocation / saving. 148 should not have to arrive at the Champs venue at 4 am...
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I wouldn't mind reserved seating for, say 6 scouts per team, at each competition. Our scouts spent the entirety of Day 1 at Hartford on their knees behind the judges (Hartford has a ton of room between judges seating and stands) because we got there only 1/2 hr early instead of an hour early and ended up seated in a location where we couldn't see the screen and could see very little of the field.
Regarding teams grabbing seats from drive team or pit crew... unfortunately we had an incident last year where our mentors and a few students got up to retrieve boxed lunches for the pit crew and strategy team who stayed in the stands. A few members of another team swooped in on their seats and spread out their stuff since there were more seats than of them. When our team returned with lunch and asked if they could move their stuff, they complained and yelled, "No saving seats!" Very weird. Thankfully this has been the exception.