Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

There is no saving of seats. Nothing beats being yelled at by 8 people saving 30 seats when you're trying to find 5 together for your team that just got eliminated from Carver playoffs. Nothing beats the new black mom on your team being told "you don't belong here" when she's looking for a seat to watch her son in a match.

I get really fired up over a lot of minutiae, but this one is really important in how so many people of age choose to display their abysmal human-to-human behavior qualities. Over the last eight years I have kept an unfortunately ballooning list of adults who think that the vitriolic, ungracious, aggressive behavior towards adults and CHILDREN from other teams when they are in fact in the wrong is acceptable.

422 is not a powerhouse team but the whole team (occasionally except drive team and me, but not usually) lines up at every venue around an hour before the doors open. It's important to me and the rest of the leadership on the team that we follow all rules and guidelines in FIRST to instill a culture in younger students and their parents that there are intrinsic and extrinsic merits in following all rules. I believe among the teams on our Division at champs, we were the 4th team in line behind 148, 1678, 1538. With the exception of Sunday in Asheville because it took a while to get our check at IHOP, we were the first full team to show up at the other events.

When adults from other teams SHOVE, YELL, or CURSE AT CHILDREN all while WEARING THEIR TEAM SHIRT WITH NAME AND NUMBER EMBLAZONED ON IT, it's just flat out absurd. Throwing clothes on seats, printing out signs and taping them to seats, laying team branded shop towels on seats, and having OFFICIAL SEAT-SAVER VOLUNTEERS ON YOUR TEAM IS RIDICULOUS.

My list occasionally comes with pictures for when I catch it, but since I am usually trying to put out a fire in the not stands parts of the venue, I don't get to always record parents harassing my students.

Everyone in FIRST can download the Administrative Manual, where you can find Section 4.12 that clearly states this policy. To my knowledge, every main and alternate contact gets FIRST email blasts, a majority of which during the competition season reminding you why not to save seats.

"But Wil, sometimes the parents just don't know the rule!!!"

Every team should have a main or alternate contact that both checks a team into an event and receives communications from FIRST, which includes email blasts telling teams to not save seats. Either coaches are not reading these emails, are not sitting down parent chaperones to cover chaperone expectations on trips (like they should also be doing with students), or they just don't frakking care about it.

FIRST has the option to scare some programs who think this is tolerable by threatening to withhold judged awards for witnessing these acts. The programs I witness being the biggest offenders of this rule are also the kind that shudder at the thought of being excluded from a chance at some hardware.