Quote:
Originally Posted by jill399
5- Saving seats. Before championships, word was that Curie was the powerhouse division this year. Therefore, three friends and I wanted to go watch a couple finals matches. However, in the only seats we could find [to the very very left of the field] there were at least 15 rows of seats saved for teams by 2 people each. When we tried to explain that we were just sitting there for the finals, and not to worry, our team isnt going to sit here for Einstein or anything like that, team mentors/advisors/parents (not sure which of those they were) continued to tell us to move, they were saving those seats. It states clearly in the rules that saving seats is illegal. I know that making sure your team sits together is important and it's hard to have everyone in the stands at all times, but when four students want to sit in one of 3 rows youre saving for a team and an adult yells at you to leave, there's something wrong. A FIRST volunteer sitting in the back of the stands saw us move from empty row to empty row looking for seats and being told theyre saved, and she told us to go ahead and sit wherever we wanted. Turns out, we were only there for 10 minutes to watch. And no one from the other teams had come to claim their seats yet.
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Hands down this is my NUMBER ONE complaint. There were displays of rudeness everywhere of this problem. I think part of the problem may be because people affiliated with a team, like parents, are not familiar with the rules and tend to hoard seats when they shouldn't.
Our team is small and didn't use many seats and generally only when we were competing. Once we sat down to the protest of a parent holding 50 seats. Later we tried to sit about 5 people down for one match under the protest of an EXTREMELY boorish and rude middle aged man wearing a bright orange shirt that was holding seats for a whole team that never showed up anytime we were around. (Newton)
I post this with great hesitation but at some point I think it excessive displays of rudeness requires recognition.
If we can't get this problem fixed then maybe we need to go to assigned seating based on a lottery for a fixed number of seats per team. If we can't start being nice to one another this is where is could wind up.
Everyone, PLEASE, PLEASE, work on developing a plan and communicating it to everyone traveling with a team, including friends and family.