Lack of passion in scouting

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by robotcanuck1676

One of the biggest problems I see (I'm unofficial head scout/strategist) with our scouts is the lack of enthusiasm. They're told to sit there and watch a robot. Essentially, they say, "I don't care, I'm not going to do this." We've tried to make it easier for them (intranet-based databases on laptops, forms that make it really easy for them to know what they have to do, etc...), but they still blow it off. So I pose this question, because I haven't figured out the answer yet: How do you "inspire" your scouts? How do you get them excited about it? How do you focus them? We bring our entire team (~35-40 people) to NJ. ~10-15 are down in the pits at any one time. So, we have 20-25 people available, and we only need 6 at a time, but I sometimes have trouble finding people. Everyone runs when I see them, or says "I just got here, gimme a break", or "I just did it", or "I'm going in like 5 minutes". How does everyone get their scouts interested in what they're doing?

The inspiration comes as a general team attitude. My old team (11-MORT) became very large in the 4 years I was there. By the time I was a junior there was no way we could fit even a quarter of our team in the pits. When you have that many people not directly hands on with the robot, you have to get them something to do, something they will ENJOY doing.

My sophomore year of high school was the game known as stack attack. I was the human player of my team so I was in the pit. A couple of other kids in my grade decided they wanted to get involved so they grabbed pieces of paper and started scouting the pits. Eventually more people joined in. By the time we got to nationals we had a solid scouting database going.

The next year...we go to NJ, now our team is getting quite large. The same guys decide to head up the scouting team again, but this time theyre going to recruit a few of their friends to help them out. All it takes is 1-2 people that are passionate to get scouting going.

I didn't spend a lot of time scouting because of human playering/coaching/driving the robot and being in the pit...but the few times I did, i cant tell you how much fun we had. Everyone would be in the stands laughing, telling jokes, sharing stories, and SCOUTING. Eventually scouting became THE thing to do at competitions, and our team started doing a lot better, the robot was performing beautifully.

Lead by example....show people that scouting can be fun, and is possibly the most important thign you can do at a competition. From a coaching standpoint, I can tell you...the coach is NOTHING without valuable scout information. If the coach is nothing, the robot is NOTHING. It all starts from teh scouts...get your kids to see this.



Pascack rules!