[AndyB]

The way scouting has worked for us is:

I designate anyone not 100% essential to the pit crew as scouters (up until we have 6 or 7). We scout all day Friday and I generally leave them about 5 matches before ours and head down to discuss a strategy with our drive team and our alliance partners. It had worked alright and I was always able to devise a list of teams based off of watching matches and reviewing the sheets that our team filled out.

For the past three years, I had always been disappointed in the lack of scouting willingness within our team... until Atlanta, 2007.

I had the opportunity to coordinate a scouting alliance while in Atlanta between us and two other Wisconsin teams. I created scouting sheets and made up an excel program where we could collaborate and review all scouting data. I reviewed all of the robots we would be facing in Atlanta by watching videos from Soap and TBA.

When the scouting started, it was ok, but after about an hour and a half into scouting matches in Atlanta, it started.

At first it was one entire team getting up and leaving, only saying that they needed a break. Then I started receiving sheets with nothing filled out except for a single comment saying "Sorry, I forgot to watch the match." Later we had both teams disappear for over 2 hours.

We brought 9 students down to Atlanta. 7 of them were either mechanical, electrical, programming, or drive team and were needed in the pits, almost all of the time. We had a scouting team of 2 students and 1 adult, scouting 6 robots for over 2 hours, gathering data, writing comments, and studying for the benefit of teams other than us.

I ended up spending hours after the event, continuing to enter in data into a computer, which was supposed to be the responsibility of another team. I was up until the morning.

First thing on Saturday, I rushed over to the other teams' pits and dropped off copies of the scouting data, I was thanked with a "Ok, is it all here?" and only heard a comment afterwards of, "We should do this again next year."

We have learned our lesson and I value my scouters much more. I guess you don't know what you have until you have nothing.