[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by ahecht

• Better handling of pit closing. I understand that the volunteers have to be forceful to get teams out of the pit, but seeing some of the volunteers actually screaming at teams just reeked of ungracious amateurism. I even saw one volunteer Friday yell "get the hell out" to a team. I'm sure this was just coming from a small minority of the volunteers (a vast majority of whom were great), but this should be address at the volunteer briefings.

I won't defend volunteers who scream at teams, but I can certainly understand the screamer's frustration. The days get very long for volunteers in the pits. One particularly under-appreciated job is managing time-slots on the practice fields.

Overstaying your practice time or continuing to work on your robot when the pits have officially closed are both (IMO) akin to working on your robot after ship date outside of a fix-it window, making parts in your hotel room, or entering the pits early. The only motivation for doing these things is to gain an unfair competitive advantage over other teams that don't -- so all are forms of cheating.