Curie Semifinal 1 - 3, what happened?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Frenchie

FIRST Teams are asked to be more and more professional as the years come by, and yet the infrastructure itself remains very amateurish.

The relevant infrastructure here is composed of amateurs. They're volunteers. To provide a consistently professional infrastructure would require professionally-paid workers, professional-quality training, and ongoing professionally-supervised evaluations. I doubt increasing the fees paid by teams to cover these costs would go over well.

As FIRST grows, teams are increasingly demanding better service. Can't it instead be that the teams can increasingly provide what they want FIRST to have? With more teams and more involvement, there ought to be a correspondingly higher pool of enthusiastic and capable volunteers.

A challenge to those of you grumbling about the refereeing this year: Be a referee next year. If you don't take some responsibility for improving the situation, try not to be upset if it doesn't change to your liking.