[FRC Blog] More Season Info

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Nope - and this is the second year running that they tried it on the field we were playing on. I like giving the benefit of the doubt though, because a couple of the other fields were allowed to watch. So I'd like to believe we just got unlucky two years running and the folks on our field had their signals a bit crossed.

Technically if I'm not mistaken there is a "team viewing area" that's supposed to be used for each field. Atleast that's what we had on Newton. Unfortunately all volunteers have access to is field reset people as well as volunteer coordinators when doing crowd control around the field. Becuase of this it was close to impossible to keep teams in a small box fairly far from the field with limited viewing. All of the teams ended up in the media area as they either were there when we were still attempting to move them and they didn't listen or because they just joined the crowd. This created an extremely unsafe area as Newton seemingly contained every invited guest, vip and tour group in the place. Not to mention the countless team members who hopped down onto the floor and shouldn't have been there at all. Even after teams got eliminated many stayed and if they were told to leave they usually made a big issue out of it.

What I think probably has happened to you is that the vc's running the fields to prevent a situation like that are just preventing people from watching all together. It's unfortunate that they had to do this but I also don't blame them. They wouldn't have to do stuff like this if teams just listened. Personally I think first should formalize the media area a little more with ropes instead of just tape and a small sign saying only real media, tours, invited guests or team media up to 3 matches before your teams match. It would help the volunteers jobs a lot, create a more safe environment and allow them to also designate a team viewing area. When you have a roped off area it would be a lot easier to figure out who's allowed to be there.