[JackN]

To me, there are three keys to winning at first: Average Robot, Strong driving and scouting. Without knowledge of your opponents your drivers and coach are like fish out of water. It makes strategy impossible. Make sure your students know this, because it really gives them a reason to scout.

Our team has a very strict and traditional scouting system. Each student in the stands is assigned X number of teams. They are responsible for watching every match that their teams play. The teams they have are written on a piece of paper and when I or the other scouting captains need info on a team for a match, we go to the student who has the team in question. Each student is an expert on five to ten to twelve teams and you can confidently know the capabilities of any opponent or ally. One meeting before our first regional is devoted to going over our scouting sheet and the proper way to fill it out. This allows all of our scouts to understand and easily input information.