[Jeff Waegelin]

There is nothing more stressful in FIRST than having to make a judgement call that will affect another team's performance at an event. I've been a referee at various events for the past 5 seasons, and I've even been a Head Referee (at Detroit last year), and on numerous occasions, I've had to make a call based on how I thought the rule should be interpreted. I've been fortunate enough to get it right most of the time, but it was never easy. Anything that FIRST can do to educate its referees on how to make some of the tricky calls will make that process that much easier.

In the end, though, there is always some subjectivity, and us referees are all human, too. We make mistakes, sometimes we don't understand a rule completely, and sometimes we miss things because we were looking the wrong way. Hopefully, though, the more training we can give each referee, the better equipped they will be to make the call, and try to get it right.