[Brandon Holley]

I agree with many of the posters in this thread who agree that "they are just volunteers" excuse is no longer valid.

Something MUST be done, because what would a major league sport be if the crowned champions were crowned (or not crowned) because of a poor referee decision?

Unfortunately, reffing a sport, or being an umpire or any of this, is not usually something that can be picked up over a online courses test. I was an umpire in little league baseball, which believe it or not can have its fair share of confrontation. There were umpires that simply could not cut it. They didn't have the eye, or the "nack" to do it. Even though they are volunteers, in a game as complicated as that, you may have to look at getting professional help. The head referee cannot look at the entire field at once...



My suggestions:
1. There absolutely must be a way to train these referees better than just a test. Corey balint had suggested a video of possible scenarios played out via animation or even people robots like done in the kickoff examples, and do this pre regional events.

2. Even if it means raising the regional fee a hundred dollars extra per team, it would be worth it to have all the referees in person, together, going over the rules and some of the scenarios that might occur. Teams pay so much money to go to an event, its simply unfair to not have consistent refereeing event to event. Even if this means paying for these referees to fly around the country to keep it consistent.

3. The last suggestion I have isn't really a suggestion, but more of an observation of things that I've seen at competitions that unease me. Specifically in the case of talking to referees in the "box", I have seen white shirted volunteers turn students away without giving them the chance to state their case. This is obviously unacceptable. The box is there for a reason, it is there so that a student can talk to a referee about what had just occurred in a match. There is no reason for a disconnect between the students and the referees. Regardless of whether its about the robots or not, its always about the students. If it means the schedule needs to wait for 45 seconds, then let the schedule wait. Everyone is supposed to be there for the kids, so lets actually let the kids talk. Going from FLL in '01 to FRC '02 to '05 to FRC college mentor I have definitely seen the disconnect between the students/teams and FIRST as a unit. It saddens me to see students turned away from expressing their opinion, this isn't what FIRST is about.