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Re: Have You Trained Your Human Player Today?
GTR is running pretty smoothly all things considered but there were things I saw today that made me have to go back to this thread again.
I witnessed some of the most blatantly inexcusable mistakes I have ever seen teams make in the driver stations in all my years in FIRST that left me completely flabbergasted.
*I witnessed a human player just standing there with a ball in the trident and wait and stare for seconds like they wanted to see the light turn on.
* I witnessed countless number of foot faults where kids not only stepped out of the station but were never in it in the first place! A whole drives team was outside the box!
*But the one that took the cake was the human player who stood over by the judges area and simply watched the match while his team participated. He was so far over he was out of the referee's line of vision (who was too busy watching the field to notice some kid standing behind him who should have been in the driver's station) and didn't incur penalties. When I approached him after the match and asked him if he realized that he may have incurred a whole lot of penalty points for his alliance he said he had no idea he was supposed to be in the driver's station.
Sadly this isn't an isolated incident as I have seen time and again teams do things that make me wonder if the only understanding of what they had too do came from simply watching the game animation.
Over the years I have gone to many events and have witnessed actions in the stations that I can merely label as shameful to be blunt.
It's one thing to build a mediocre to poor robot due to lack of funds and resources but it's a whole other thing to come to the events woefully unprepared because teams cannot be bothered to click a link and read the manual.
I know people love to dismiss the behaviors of these teams and say "it's not about the robot and "winning doesn't matter" but considering the investment and time, effort and money that other teams have also put into this what they are doing is practically downright criminal.
When you sign up for an event you are obligated to put forth your best effort not just simply for your students and mentors but for the other teams at the event who are forced to work along side you in matches. That these teams come so blatantly unprepared to compete doing the simplest things like knowing where to stand in the driver's station is an insult to the hard work they have done and should not be tolerated plain and simple.
Reading and understanding the rules should be a requirement you do before you hit the field not a strategic advantage of well rounded teams that know what they're doing!
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