2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

7. The referees, and specifically the head referees need to start listening to the teams. Blowing off multiple teams when we have Q&A's up on our smart phones that answer the question at hand SPECIFICALLY is ridiculous. I'm speaking of the issues seen on Galileo, with ball placement. What happened there was a travesty. For a head ref to make a change to how balls have been placed all year at the champs is crazy. For that same ref to ignore multiple teams complaints and proof that it's wrong is worse. Then, to create a new rule on the fly - that teams have to be off the field before the balls were placed on the bridges..... If it seems I'm bitter, I am. We missed seeding first by one qual point, and we lost a match by 1 point where the volunteer specifically moved the balls after we set up our robot so we could not pick them up in hybrid by placing them to the extreme outer portions of the bridge. They later did the same thing to 33, and several other teams with hybrids that went after the balls on the bridge. I'm over it now.... but the head refs need to be more responsive to the students and more active in going up the ladder to resolve problems.

I agree with everything you said; however, what rule is there regarding ball placement? All I could find was [G05]
Each Bridge will be preset with two Basketballs. Basketballs allotted to Robots that are not used, will be preset on the Coopertition Bridge.


FIRST really dropped the ball this year with communicating updates to head ref at events with regard to what to follow based on Q&A findings. Volunteers don't have the time to read through all of the Q&A but FIRST should either add to the weekly update recent answers from the Q&A that are important or establish that any answer to the Q&A stands as an official rule. Very frustrating to see but I'd stand behind the head refs decision (currently) because to my knowledge they have been told to follow the game manual not the Q&A.

@Craig Roys

Great point! People need to stop complaining about the variability in a foam basketball. These are a child's toy, not a NBA basketball required to have the same properties. Several teams caught on to how the balls acted and moved to catapults others like our team analyzed the problem and how to work around it. Granted our shooter isn't 100% accurate but it is pretty darn close between a new and used ball. Unless you feel like paying more for FIRST to physically check each and every game piece to make sure they all have the same physical properties, just move along.