Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Copioli
Madison,
I suggest you bring this up directly to FIRST, specifically Aiden Brown. I am sure he will welcome all suggestions and ways to improve. He and Dave Lavery were at St. Louis this weekend and were very interested in the referees and the scoring system. By the way, the reffing at St. Louis was excellent. They did a great job explaining the violations and were consistent with their calls.
There were some discrepancies with counting lines and counting trackballs, but I suspect that will get worked out soon.
In any case, the most effective way to get things done regarding this is directly with Aiden. Specific examples and situations are always best.
-Paul
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Thanks, Paul.
I was a bit afraid that any discussion I tried to have about what could be done would be inappropriate at this time in the season. Everyone's busy and I have no doubt that everyone involved is absolutely dedicated to making things as good as they can be. I am interested in watching the season progress and, from that, developing a more substantive set of ideas about what steps can be taken to make things better for everyone.
It's difficult to point out specific examples in many cases because, again, teams were not being told that they were penalized. My knowledge of what confusion there was comes from my experience on the field as a coach and from our scouts in the stands that were watching the referees.
Specifically, there was concern that:
- teams were being penalized for driving clockwise within a quadrant, but not crossing backward through the plane of a line.
- all contact outside of the bumper zone was being penalized.
- there need be more clarification about protection for hurdlers (<G42>), particularly with respect to how it applies to machines in between the hurdler and the overpass
- signaling to pass using a trackball in your possession was disallowed
- teams were not being told what penalties they'd incurred
- it's difficult to determine if you've been signaled to pass and most teams weren't sure what to look for from the refs regarding whether it'd happened and how much time they had to move.
There were good things that happened, too.
- Our robot got caught up in another robot and we were penalized for entanglement. The referee that called it came up to us and explained what happened and why the penalty was called. That's perfect and it's much nicer to know it's coming than scramble after the score is announced to figure out what's happened.
- During the elimination rounds, many teams -- ours included -- assumed that we'd be allowed a pit crew. The head ref. quickly informed us that it wasn't allowed and was able to let us know which section of the manual had the relevant information and that it had been deleted. Again, great. As soon as she said that it'd been deleted, I recalled exactly what she was talking about.
- After confusion about how <G42> was being enforced on Friday, the refs included a brief explanation on Saturday morning of what they were looking for.
- Early Friday, one referee stood out by calling many, many more penalties than the others. She was replaced or moved into a different position that made the officiating more consistent. This was FANTASTIC and demonstrated that the refs were trying. That matters.