Improving Officiating at FIRST Events

[Michael Corsetto]

I agree that making the penalties called in any given match announced to the public, and to the teams competing more specifically, is important. I remember back in 2005 at the Silicon Valley Regional when one of the dreaded 30 point penalties was called against an alliance going up against 254 and company in the finals. It was a close call for whatever reason (I can't remember the details, I'm pretty sure there is a thread somewhere on CD about it) but the crowd was very upset with call, even booing. Probably one of the biggest displays of negativity at a FIRST event could have been avoided if the penalty was clearly announced to the crowd and all controversiality regarding the call explained.

Also, as driver for my last 2 years on team 114, and human player the two years before that, we made a point of walking into the challenge square, or whatever its called, not to argue penalties, but just to find out what we did. I even remember waiting in line once or twice to talk to the head ref. Simply announcing the penalties would alleviate this problem and make for a smoother event.

In any case, thank you ref's, and all of the other volunteers, for making FIRST possible. I hope improvement can be made, just have they have been (penalty flags, yellow cards, etc.), since I will probably be refereeing next year

Mike C.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Corey Balint

I said it once before and I'll say it again. They need to make a video showing certain situations that violate rules and ones that do not. While you can not cover all situations, if you get enough situationsout there, most refs will be able to follow what the rules are intended for accurately.

I hear you. I think I said something like that too.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Corey Balint

I said it once before and I'll say it again. They need to make a video showing certain situations that violate rules and ones that do not. While you can not cover all situations, if you get enough situationsout there, most refs will be able to follow what the rules are intended for accurately.

Where are you going to shoot this video, about 3-4 weeks before ship? Gonna use the animation or the people-bots from Kickoff?

[Shankar M]

I can see both sides of this argument. Referees are human, and if there is one thing we can guarantee, it is the fact that we humans do have a tendency to err. Of course, the other side has just as much validity to their case. For a team to pony up $6,000 to attend a regional competition is no mean feat. For them to fork up that kind of money to be the test subjects at the first competition of the year, particularly if it is also their last competition of the year, is definitely a tough pill to swallow.

This is not a new point of discussion. This issue has been a popular (or not-so-popular) topic for the past few years that I've been around to witness FIRST events (and likely long before then as well).

However, something that is new this year, is a FIRST "unofficial" regional during the competition season: the Kettering FRC District Rookie Competition. I imagine that the main goal of this event, after giving some of the lower budget teams a shot at attending a second event, is to give rookie teams a taste of the FIRST atmosphere; to learn what things are like.

One of the interesting things I saw mentioned in the event's description was that the event will be "played on a regulation 2008 FIRST field with all 2008 game rules in effect." Now I understand this is a pilot project, but could there lie some potential to improving officiating through an event like this? If this were an event that was held as, perhaps, a pre-season competition, wouldn't that give everyone the chance to do some learning?

The rookies attending would get a head start on understanding the atmosphere and environment of FIRST. Teams that do not attend would be able to get a feel for the game and understand what it is like. (I have always liked figuring this kind of stuff out first hand, but there is only so much you can take away from a webcast, so I think a lot of the figure-it-out-for-yourself mentality is preserved). Perhaps, most importantly, this kind of event would allow referees to see how certain elements of the rulebook will play out. Following the competition, approaches to the game could be revisited, rules could be tweaked, and event video (a popular suggestion for how to "train" referees) could be circulated to "regular" season competitions. These clips could then be used by event coordinators and head referees to better prepare the referees at their event for the task at hand.

[thefro526]

Now that we have seen almost (if not) 20 regionals it seems like there are major call inconsistencies in the officiating at regional. I think that there needs to be a massive ref meeting in the next week or two to get the rules clarified. I know the refs jobs are hard but there has to be a better way to educate everyone on the rules

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

George, I know you did an awesome job at relaying the messages but sometimes that info gets misconstrued.
And the messenger gets blamed sometimes.
How's that old saying go? "Don't blame the messenger." lol

Maybe to remedy this, we can take one of the good aspects of professional sports, and have the microphone handed over to the actual (head?) referee (like in NFL games) to explain why the penalty was incurred, and to exactly who?

For example, the microphone gets handed to the referee and he says "10 pt penalty, team xxx, for rule xxx" and then the actual referee can explain it since they made the actual decision.

Just to point out that Elgin had a good idea that I've been wondering why they haven't done for years.

[GaryVoshol]

Since this thread is still going, and since "the Boss" has responded, I'll throw in my $.02 - take it for what it's worth.

Madison brings up some good points, and other later posters have also contributed. Such good points in fact that many of them are already being done. There is the new referee training and certification, which ensures that the referees are familiar with this year's rules. Many refs return year after year, and many participate in more than one regional (I'll be at 3 this year). Last year one of the paid production staff jokingly said some of us were nuts for being there so much.

Other things go on in the background. For instance, someone said there were no refs on Thursday. How do you know? Perhaps there weren't any zebra shirts making calls, but at any event I've been to, at least some of the referee crew is there on Thursday watching and learning.

Yes refereeing is tough, but I really enjoy it. "The best seat in the house" is how I've heard it referred to. That's true - you get to see all these amazing machines up close and personal. And I've recently been told by a mentor that he'd rather herd a bunch of HS kids all season long than ref. That's a valid point as well.

In at least 4 events (season and off-season) I was at last year, the referee did take the microphone to explain calls. Not every last call - I wouldn't expect it this year for instance to say "Blue Robot 9876 crossed the line backwards 3 times." That kind of information can easily be passed to the announcer, and in several events it has been done. Even if the penalty isn't announced on the PA, the refs often will speak to the offending team privately.

One other thing that must be stressed is that we don't want to have phantom penalties. The referees have a flag in their hands, and use them to indicate when a penalty is given. Andy Baker made a special emphasis on this at IRI. I suspect that often gets lost in the noise of all the overstimuli at an event. And yes it's a shame when one alliance member racks up 30 or 40 points of penalties that are not noticed by the other drive teams, and suddenly that 22-point margin of a win is taken away. But that's hardly any different than the wide receiver who sees his touchdown taken away because of a clip in the backfield.

I've read reports from at least 3 regionals this week that the refs were excellent. Maybe the participants didn't always agree with the interpretations, but the same interpretations were made consistently all weekend. The next goal of Referee Development needs to be to make sure all events get the same quality. That's hard to do. If Oregon had problems this year, it may be due to the volunteers that were available, both in terms of time and travel. My daughter's team went to a regional last year, and they were dismayed at the laxity of enforcing certain things (not specifically referees) compared to what they had experienced at other regionals. Enough so that they probably wouldn't be returning to the regional. We don't need to have any regionals categorized as "the one with the poor refs". And I'm sure the GDC is working to eliminate that distinction.

[Madison]

I wanted to take a moment to reiterate that I'm aware that all of the volunteers -- and the referees, particularly -- want to make the game as exciting and fair as possible. I am not concerned at all about specific situations that affected my team; we can't change the past and our disappointment was someone else's excitement and that's just fine by us. We all had fun.

I've had the chance to talk about some of my concerns with FIRST and with well-respected folks here on the forum and am satisfied that I've been heard. That's the best I can ask for and know that everyone's trying their best to make this week's regionals as good as they can be.

For my part, I promise that I'll be nicer in Tacoma than I was in Portland. I'm disappointed that I was so angry about the refereeing this weekend. I'm very fortunate for the opportunities that FIRST has given me and that it continues to give me -- I get to spend a lot of someone else's money doing something I love -- and I take the responsibility that comes with that very seriously. If my team and the robot we field are not the best that they can be, I'm disappointed in myself and that makes me upset.

Tonight, my team had dinner with 368 from Hawaii and showed them around our lab. It reminded me how nice so many of the people in FIRST are and that nobody on our team really cares about what happened this weekend. We did well, despite my frustrations, and the kids deserved every bit of congratulations that they received from everyone back home.

So, yeah -- thanks, everyone, for listening. I think that there're lots of things we can to keep making this program better and we should do all that we can to be a part of that. Maybe one day, I'll get to be a referee and then I'll stop abusing them quite so much -- or they'll all realize that I'm stubborn and blunt, but don't have a mean bone in my body.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

For my part, I promise that I'll be nicer in Tacoma than I was in Portland.

You better be nicer or there just might be mistakes in scoring!

[efoote868]

I for one would like to thank the referees at St. Louis for doing a great job. I referee soccer myself, and I understand the pressures involved in refereeing. I had a couple incidents where I had to speak with the head ref, and he was very understanding, and agreeable. There was another instance where I had to talk to another ref, and once again, the communication was there, and we were able to work through it.

Advice for talking to referees: Be patient, and agreeable. You arguing will never get them to change a call, and in all instances whats done is done. The only thing you can hope for is that in the future the refs will call it your way, or you can avoid whatever the situation was that initiated the call.

Also, know the rules. What eats me alive is when someone argues with a ref, but has absolutely no clue what the rules are.