Improving Officiating at FIRST Events

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Aiden has been contacted, as well as, other GDC members. I expect this to be straightened out in today's dirver meetings. The definitiions, rues, and Q & A regarding this subject make it pretty obvious that the diagonal hurdle is legal if it satifies the rules of a legal HURDLE (note: not HURDLING).

Just for retrospective clarification, there were teams that interpreted EricH's three Q&A's to coincide with their opinion and interpretation of the game rules that a trackball needed to be HURDLING in order to score 8 points.
After clarification from Dr. Browne, all doubts were laid to rest on the legality of hurdling from the quadrant clockwise from a teams homezone (it counts)

As a (hopeful, even if temporary) closure to this topic, I am pleased to see the generally progressive and constructive tone to the challenges that this season has presented. We are seeing a vastly expanded rulebook, we are seeing literally thousands of penalties called each week, points being subtracted in a scale not seen since 2005's 30-pointers, and not likely to be equaled any time soon. We are seeing much more pressure being put on volunteers from both sides, from both FIRST National and from the teams, for perfection in an imperfect world.

But it seems as if people have realized, for some part, that at least on the perfection part, we are progressing in the right direction. Going from a small-scale cultlike following to a worldwide movement obviously requires some (heckova lotta) change, and obviously we're in the middle of it, all of us. As the sign says, "Please excuse our dust while we are remodeling."

And so this year it seems like people on the most part understand. Last year was the burst of anger and surprise and shock and outrage that reverberated through the entire FIRST community, and this year there hasn't been as much emotion as that. Yes, there are still some bricks and mortar that we're stubbing our toes on (and some people that need to learn the responsibility that comes with their roles in FIRST, in regards to this forum), but at least the volunteers are being trained better, and the folks upstairs in their jeans and hawaiian shirts are saying, "There is a problem, we are aware of it," even though it seems like they aren't doing enough to act on it. I have no doubt that next year will be better than this year, just like this year was better than last (because honestly, I don't want to imagine anything worse).

Oh, and P.S. - for the record, from experience it's about 100 times easier being a bleachers referee than being a real referee. Try the latter sometime. (No, seriously, I need refs for MARC, ARC, and Kettering.)