A better way to handle fouls?

[Danny Blau]

After playing this past weekend and seeing the game from behind the drivers wall (as a coach) it was wildly apparent that calls were missed and the game play was affected. G30 was the most missed call that we saw last weekend and setting this precedent invalidates 6 weeks worth of design/strategy work done by a bunch of Frisbee shooters. Many teams designed and optimized their machines to take shoots from the pyramid knowing it was a protected space.

Fouls like this and just about all seen on a FIRST field could be reviewed and corrected if the refs watched a top-down view of the field from a camera up in the rigging for the lights/projector. It only takes 2.25 minutes to re-watch a match and no field has ever been re-set and ready to go in that amount of time (they actually must give the teams 5 minutes). Reply would be harder in Qualifications but even there every match counts and every score matters.

I know FIRST is FIRST and the robot and wins/loses are a small part of the experience, but your typical high schooler hasn't been in the game long enough to experience both winning and losing at the hands of the refs.

~Danny