[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

What you've described is also scouting. We try to do both objective scouting (like the paper sheets you describe) as well as subjective scouting where a few smart people try to figure out the teams strategy and tendencies. We scout both for strategy for the next match, and for choosing who to pick. In both cases, we use the objective data as the starting point, and then modify our plans based on the subjective data.

Just like our robot, we improve the scouting throughout the season. We usually find that at the first regional we either collect too much objective data, or not the right types of objective data.

Joe got what I was getting ready to type spot on.

We learn what to look for by watching a week one regional and make our first rev of our scoutning plan. This is heavily influenced by our stratagy team deciding what we need to know to pick and what we need to know to win the match. If we learn after one event we didn't collect the right info we update our plan and move on.

All the info on each team gets filed into "the bible" after each match we watch. Our qualitative scouters work with the drive team to create stratagies that give us the best opportunity to win the match.

It's important not to just stick people as scouts, they need to want to do it and understand what it does for the team. Our group of 7-10 scouters always has a leader who wants to be there and keep things going because they know our method of scouting has done well for us over the years. If the scouts don't buy into the system and the plan then you get garbage output. Make sure that they feel they are contributing and not being wharehoused for the event.