relying on realtime scoring

[Gary Dillard]

Some concern based on my observations this weekend:

We have always in the past had someone (usually the coach) keep track of the score during the match so we can adjust and time our strategy. This year because of the rapid scoring of balls (and inability to see how many 1 point balls are scored) we are relying much more heavily on the realtime scoring on the screen to track the match.

There were numerous problems with scoring at UCF, such that they reverted to manually counting balls during the match for the final tally. I don't know the details of how this was done or adjustments were made so I'd like to hear from some of the refs.

The errors in the realtime system causes 2 real problems:

1) Selection of the winner of the autonomous mode. Hopefully the manual tally was used to correct awarding of the 10 point bonus if necessary but I don't know if this was ever the case. Regardless, the ability to start on defense is a big advantage in the match.

2) Decision to stop ball scoring / defending and go to the ramp. In eliminations we made this decision a number of times since we had 3 ramp bots, and frequently we made it early based on the point differential. There's always a risk of penalties (although the change to all 5 point penalties is very welcome compared to last year) but we leave some margin. However, if the realtime score is off by 20-30 points as was sometimes the case, it becomes a case where changing the score after the fact could cost us a match that we would have played differently had the score been correct.

What to do, what to do........