Practice Fields in St. Louis

[Craig Roys]

I was wondering if anyone else had a problem with the way the practice fields were run at the Championship. It was extremely inefficient in my veiw and made it almost impossible for a team to try to make any actual adjustments. Initially they were only giving you 10 minutes (later increased to 15) which, for those of you using labview know, is not enough time if you need to make any adjustments. Plus, there were many times that a team wanted to test one quick thing and then leave - that spot would stay empty on the field for the remainder of the time until the time slot was up; at least, that's the way it was on our field. They would not let another team just jump into that spot. Also, there was a good hour before opening ceremonies on Friday morning that the field sat empty (what a major waste) because FIRST was concerned that they wouldn't get them cleared for opening ceremonies. I understand that there were approx. 176 teams for each practice field, but many of those teams either didn't use the field or only needed it for a very short time. The rest of the teams who could have benefitted from some extra time on the practice field got shortchanged.

I offer up two possible solutions (and I understand I may be living in a dream world here):

1. Let teams police themselves on use of the practice field and just keep a volunteer or two there to make sure people are being safe and that no one is completely monopolizing things. The majority of FIRST teams, I've found, are very willing to work with each other and accomodate each other when it comes to things like practice fields.
   
2. Create a filler line (or even a sign-up list that teams would have to continue to keep and eye on) and, once one team leaves a spot on the field, the next team in line (or on the list) jumps in to that spot. Again a volunteer or two would be needed to keep things moving and make sure that no one team monopolizes the field for too long.

As I stated earlier, I may be living in a dream world, but I have to believe that the practice fields could have been run much better (and more efficiently) than they were. Lastly, sort of a moot point since this year's game is over, but it was also sort of a pain to have human players practicing their throwing techniques on the practice field while teams were out there trying to test their autonomous programs...seems like there could have been another area for that.

Just my $0.02. I'm interested in hear other's thoughts/opinions about this.