Use of Timeouts

[Bryan Herbst]

This may vary by region, volunteer crew, or competition, but are FIELD TIMEOUTS displayed on the screen or alliance wall timers?

All timeouts appear on the timers on the alliance walls.

Whether or not they appear on the big screen is up to the specific event, though at Lake Superior we started putting up the timer about halfway through eliminations. It looks like a normal match screen for the most part.

The ref panels should also display the timer during a timeout, but I don't recall seeing that. I might have just missed it though.

Do head refs start a stopwatch after each field reset signal in elims?

As of this year, the head ref panel will automatically start a timer after the end of a match that lets the head ref know how long the teams have to call in backups or use their timeout coupons.

Once the head ref receives a timeout coupon, he will instruct the scorekeeper at the FMS to initiate a timeout. Once the scorekeeper hits the button, the timeout starts.

It would be to an alliance's benefit to wait until 1:59, much like coaches and players in other sports can watch clocks and call timeouts at specific/final points. Heck, sometimes you see people standing right in front of refs for a while, but making the "T" at the last second!

This is something I see a lot. Teams will have their alliance captain standing with the head ref, coupon in hand, waiting until the last second to place it in the ref's hand. The refs I know are just fine with this arrangement.