[Jared Russell]

My tips:

1. Unless you have a small army of scouts (our team does, but most do not), trying to count the balls scored by and on each robot individually is going to take way, way too much time and effort. There is no substitute for watching matches, but don't get too caught up in the ball-by-ball details.

2. Asking teams about their robot is a quick way to get the basics, but it also leads to a lot of misinformation. Nobody is going to look you in the eye and say that "we suck" (nor should they!). Limit your questions to basics like, what kind of drive? How experienced are your drivers? How do you load and score? Autonomous modes? Asking them to rate their abilities or give you figures like "how many balls do you score in a match" is not terribly likely to give you useful information. Any misinformation here is just as likely to be purposeful as not; scouting in the pits at a week 1 regional you will find many teams who honestly don't know how their machine is going to work.

2. Oftentimes it is the third partner who will determine the success or failure of your alliance in the elimination rounds. Most events will have a handful of elite machines and then a logjam of decent to good machines. You will quickly discover who can score in droves, but it is important to avoid the natural tendency to focus your attention solely on these teams. Sorting through the middle of the pack is the most difficult - and oftentimes most important - job a scout will have. Case in point: our selection of 2543 at San Diego this year, and our selection of 84 at Philly the past two years. All three picks led to regional wins as our third partner effectively shut down the opposition's best scorer.

3. Oftentimes you can get "sleeper" picks who did not perform up to their abilities during qualifications, but who remedied their problems by the time eliminations come around. Maybe there was some mechanical issue that wasn't fixed until Saturday morning. Or maybe all that was separating the robot from being a great scorer was a simple change. At San Diego, 1572 started the event with a shooter, and ended with a power dumper. Their record was not great, but by the end you could tell that they were one of the best bots there. Asking around in the pits is the only good way to figure out what issues people have had, and how they have been addressed.

4. Too often people stop scouting way, way too early. On practice day there are tons of scouts in the crowds, yet on Saturday morning they are often somewhere else. Don't let what a team does on the practice field (likely with less than 6 robots on it at once) sway your judgment too heavily, and likewise just because selections are about to begin doesn't mean you can pack up.

5. In this era of 3000+ team numbers, I find that keeping teams straight is a challenge in its own right. Pictures are your friend. Remember team names, colors, chants, etc. All the scouting in the world won't help unless you keep track of it!

6. Ask your drive team for thoughts. Some teams have fantastic machines, but are impossible to work with. Others have modest robots but are true team players. In the playoffs, you will get farther with 3 decent robots and one TEAM than with 3 amazing robots playing separately (at least this year - this isn't always the case).

Good luck!