[galewind]

Two of the most under-appreciated jobs at competitions are scouting captains and scouting team members. You never know how successful your team will be at a competition, and need to be prepared to select from a large list of teams, depending upon the event you're at. If you get seated at the top, you truly need to know who the best teams are that complement your style of gameplay, and who consistently perform well at the given tasks.

Often times, the scouting crew's work is never used (due to the inability to pick), so their hard work often times goes to naught, making them incredibly under-appreciated. This year, we started off 5-0 on Friday night in Newton, and had a three-hour scouting meeting in one of our hotel rooms. Due to a motor burn-out in the first of two near-consecutive rounds, we lost both rounds, ending at 5-2, and were unable to select alliance partners. In fact, we didn't get picked, so all of their work was un-usable.

On the positive side, I believe a lot of our students learned to truly appreciate the benefits of a good scouting team when we saw the alliance captains choose some very surprising picks.