2005 BTB ~ The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

[Erin Rapacki]

It's too bad the parking information didn't get out to everybody... one car for each TEAM was allowed to park in the Matthews Arena parking lot. Everyone else was supposed to go to Renaissance garage where parking was only $5 a day on the weekends (my brother was happy to hear that, he parks at NU when he goes to red-sox games). Yea, NU knows the BTB needs a website.

Field managing is not necessarily a job you can teach somebody to do in five minutes and experienced people are capable of making the fixes faster... which is why I didn't ask for additional help from teams. I do want to thank Tom Calef from Hatch for being there though and helping us out in the morning. The field had some last-minute electrical issues because it came from two FIRST events before it arrived in Boston, and Tom's quick response to the field issues were very much appreciated.

Last year I wrote an ARENA digital simulation about FIRST match turnover times and how to improve the process. The program analyzed that a match goes over its time limit for two main reasons: the referees take to long or the MC talks too much. Well, I know I can be a talker but in addition, the referees wanted to make sure every call was fair and accurate.

Also, I think the time delay wasn't so much a matter of match-turnover times being slow... we got a late start with those field electrical issues.

Well, thanks for your feedback and please keep posting it. I'll relay this information back to NU and the BTB planning committee in hopes that they will address these situations for next year.