Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Copioli
8. Those of you complaining about the quality of reffing, become a ref. I will do this next year as I have never reffed beofer and will now start. At Detroit, the reason the reffing is much better than other places I have witnessed is the refs are mostly involved with FIRST teams or are FIRST team alumni. We need to increase the talent level of the referees from within. We must become a part of the solution.
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I totally agree.
Refereeing is not easy, obviously. I've been reffing since 2000, but it has not been my focus during the FRC season. I have reffed off and on, and only consistently as the head ref at IRI. People give me fairly good feedback from my reffing at IRI. I have learned some lessons* over the years.
(IRI is easy to ref, in a way, since we learn from the recent FRC season)
Last year, I volunteered as a judge at a new regional. I thought this was a good thing to try out. During the finals, the referee made a bad call, and I realized that my place is not to be a judge, but to be a ref. I should not be sitting there, criticizing the head ref when I think I can do a better job.
So... I signed up to be a head ref this year. Pat Major and Gail Alpert asked me to be the head ref at the Michigan Rookie event 2 weeks ago (except for leaving the teams on the field for too long during a field failure, I think I did well) and I will be the head ref in Oklahoma. Depending on how I do, I might be a head ref in Atlanta. Head ref or not, I will ref in Atlanta. This will be tough, as I could also be supporting team 45 or manning the AndyMark booth at the supplier's showcase.
* yeah, this is coming from a guy who disabled the wrong team in one of the semi-finals at Portland in 2004 (we re-ran that match), and the same guy who DQ'ed 71, 111, and 93 for entanglement at IRI in 2002.
So, yes, I agree with Paul. I usually do.
Andy B.