Referee not knowing the rules

[rwkling1]

Originally Posted by runneals

We noticed the refs being *extremely* cautious/lenient at North Star on Friday this year for calling fouls/technicals. We even joked about it during our scouting meeting, up to the point where we were going to have our mentor sit by the field with the rule book on Saturday to be able to show the refs the how it should be ruled, even if that meant helping our opponents. Luckily, they got their game together on Saturday, and made ~95% of the correct calls.

I give refs credit (they are volunteers after all!) for doing their best, but I suggest to all the head refs to have their refs practice during practice matches, before their rulings count. Also I believe that some of the rules this year could have been better clarified to allow refs to make better calls. From experience as a ref at a FLL this past season, there is no way to be completely ready to ref an event. I suggest that FRC makes a video like the one that Scott made for FLL & shows it to the refs. I felt as if that video helped me understand the FLL game a bit better, as an outsider.

Thank you for the input, and I totally agree. The scoring system and the fouls were quite weird this season. I really appreciate the refs, but sometimes I can't help but be a little frustrated, but that's fine. I'm not blaming our whole season on them, there is definitely things we did wrong.