Volunteering at an event you have a team at?

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by ToddF

How I wish this were true. Some teams seem to use their team member volunteers to gain advantage over others. One of the most egregious examples of this I witnessed last year at a regional we traveled to. Our team always gets up extra early to get in line at the door so we get good seats for scouting. At this event, despite being some of the first in the arena, we found the best seats already occupied by another team's stuff. I couldn't figure out how this had happened, but learned later that one of the volunteers from that team had taken advantage of his position as a volunteer to reserve his team the best seats before the arena opened.

At another event, I saw a volunteer trading buttons with an adult pit crew member so the pit crew member could watch his team's matches from right next to the field. After the match was over, they would trade back their buttons and the pit crew member would give their drive team feedback that would not have been possible without that field side access.

Our team records matches and uses the videos to improve drive team performance after every match. Last year I saw some great fieldside video playing in another team's pit. It was way better than ours, recorded from the stands, so I made inquiries. I learned that the "official" event photographer was a volunteer from that team and was supplying his team with field side video of their matches, without doing the same for other teams.

While I'm sure that the vast majority of volunteers are completely ethical, these incidents left me feeling shaken. I've concluded that there exists an "insider culture" where there is some amount of nudge-nudge, wink-wink going on which results in some teams having competitive advantages over others. If you do volunteer at an event where your team is competing, I would ask you not to engage in this type of behavior, and to report it if you observe it happening.

If you see stuff like this, I recommend bringing it to the attention of the Volunteer Coordinator at the event. I can assure that, at least for the events I've volunteered at, there is no "insider culture" like what you describe. We're serious about keeping everything on a level playing field for teams. When something does occasionally happen that we see, we take corrective action immediately. Most of the time, it's nothing intentional, just someone being too excited and not thinking things through. A gentle reminder and a little coaching is usually enough to correct the situation.