Warning: Operator Button Colors Matter!

[Kevin Sevcik]

The Adult/Student coach thread reminded me of an unfortunate incident at Lone Star last weekend. I was wandering the pits assisting teams when I heard a red card called on the field for a COACH operating the robot. <G56> says that only DRIVERS can operate the OPERATOR CONSOLE during a match. They mention this a couple of times, so it seems unlikely that an adult would actually step up and grab the controls and earn a red card, right? Well that's not what happened here. The team actually misplaced one of their operator badges and decided to use an extra badge from an earlier regional. A badge with a yellow dot on it, also known as a COACH's badge. So a ref saw a COACH operating the robot and quite correctly issued a red card.

My point obviously being that <G56> doesn't care how old you are, just whether you're wearing a DRIVER's badge or a COACH's badge. If your badge has a yellow dot on it, you can't drive the robot, period. In fact, the only people driving and feeding should be the student with blue badges with no dots. Any other badge means you're not a DRIVER or FEEDER.

Yes, I know most all of you don't need the reminder, but rookies might. And you might want to double check your alliance mates just in case. It's not always communicated effectively at an event, so we should take it on ourselves to look out for our them.