The sides of the stage zone facing toward the audience would be renamed downstage because on a real stage, the side closest to the audience is called “downstage”. Upstage follows the same idea.
-Why do this?-
Since teams are in their planning stages right now, having effective communication is key. Referring to the wrong “stage left” could cause issues. In addition, the entire field is mirrored, so why aren’t the names mirrored either? Finally, this would make it easier for the outside watchers (judges, audience, etc) because they won’t be forced to mentally position themselves in an alliance zone to check what’s right and left.
Changing the game manual might be difficult (I don’t know how any of that works as of yet) but we could all collectively agree to call them “downstage” and “upstage”.
It is from the perspective of the drivers, Stage Left and Stage Right are the left and right for the drivers, as if they are the performers in the show.
That makes sense from the drivers’ POV but from literally any other POV, it’s (IMO) confusing. Calling them “up” and “downstage”, at least for now, would make sense
The Volunteer Identification Society now dishes you with a “really, rookie?” look. Judges don’t sit at the Scoring Table all that often, they sit on the opposite side of the field or are off doing Judge things in the pits.
This would probably be easier for a game announcer to remember, since they’re usually on just one side, but for the audience, a slip-up like that is entirely inconsequential.
As it is, the left/right/center are from the PoV of the drive teams, and the terms are consistent with a head-to-head battle-of-the-bands which the theme seems to be going for.
As someone who frequently messes up right vs left in high pressure environments, I would appreciate using eg. A/B/C to refer to the chains strategically, but for the official names these seem fine.
Our strategy team is currently working with these definitions. We use them to make our lives easier when defining cycle paths. The STAGE LEFT/RIGHT definition of the game manual is quite annoying for describing cycles, because the locations are different for blue/red.
We choose to use 1,2,3,… where 1 is closest to the scoring table.
