[JHSmentor]

As a mentor for a rookie team, I must say that I was very overwhelmed and at the same time very impressed by the whole process - including the officiating. I have not other reference to go by for robotics but I hvae been playing sports all my life.

We were at the Oregon Regional that Team 488 attended - we had many questions as well for what was going on with the penalties. I totally agree with the idea of having a ref call out the penalty at the end of the match so that the team can come discuss it if they desire. But, in most cases, when we got a penalty we pretty much knew what it was for due the position of our robot on the field and the dynamics associated with the play. You then had to argue your case if you thought it was not appropriate. We got caught with the "interferring with a hurdler" when playing defense to slow them down (staying in front of them) which, in our interpretation should be legal since they just need to bump us to ask us to move. But any contact at all caused a penalty. In any case, once we found out how they were calling it, we changed our strategy (even though I still disagreed with the calls).

Another one to watch out for is backing up over a line. It seems that ANY part of the robot that crosses the line is construed as backing up and was penalized. Not really the intent of the rule by my estimation if you are just turning your robot and a part happens to cross over or if you run into the post and back up to reposition the bot.

In any case, part of the game is figuring our how they make the calls and adjusting for them. Any sport is this way and this should be no exception.

one sugestion would be to have the refs clearly give some examples before any matches start to illustrate how calls will be made during play for each rules. Knowing the written rule and seeing it in action can be very different things.