Standing Up During Competition...

[Dinger]

Our team always stands when we are haveing a match. usually this is no problem. we often tell the teams behind us that we will stand durring our match, and when it is over we will sit again. This usually calms some nerves. If we end up standing in front of scouters, and they point this out to us (usually by frenzied yelling of "gah, can you sit? i gotta scout this!"), we move close togeather to give the scouters a line of vision.

We have been on the reciveing end also, were the team in front of us stands and blocks our veiw (and most importantly the veiw of our scouters). But is this a fiasco? no. the scouters sit at the end of a row so that they have more room to move thier heads around to get the best veiw of the feild. If the team in front of us seems to be taking up way more space than they need to, or if somones mascot is in our way (happened at nationals) we have one person politely ask them if they could move slightly so that we can scout. Never once has anyone said no to me when i have asked them to make a small accomedation.

It seems to me that the only time it becomes a big deal is if someone makes it one. we ran into this at nationals when someone came up to one of our mentors and asked her if she was familiar with the "no standing rule" at all events. she politly responded that she was unfamiliar with this rule and that if it was pointed out to her in offical documentation she would happily comply. we did not ever get a chance to see that rule pointed out to us...
It seems to me that the bigger a deal people make out of the standing (as in the bigger the fit they have) the less likely it is for teams to want to be compliant. And throwing a fit doesnt seem very FIRSTy to me. What i have found is that if the two parties (the standers and the sitters behind them) have a polite exchange, there is rarely a time where a solution cannot be worked out.