They're just volunteers!--The POSITIVE

FIRST General Forum
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For volunteer complaints, go to

This topic is for celebrating the volunteers who have gone above and beyond, or have otherwise made a bad experience into a good or even great one.

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Many, many moons ago now, I was a student on an FRC team. We had, as I recall, a tough elimination match, and were eliminated on a very tough call. I don’t recall exactly what the call was, now–this was well over a decade ago–but what I do remember is that the Regional Director (Jason Morrella, as I recall) gathered all the teams on the alliance around him at one end of the curtain to make sure that we had a chance to hear exactly what the call was, and why it was made. That simple gesture influenced me greatly–to this day, if there’s something similar, I try to follow that example.

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Lemme copy over my story from the other thread:

During one of our qualifications matches we had a comms issue, a few matches later I was told by a mentor to go into the question box to ask about it, because we had 100% comms all matches before. That led to one of the FTAs coming into our pit with a CSA to diagnose what had happened. After going over DS logs he brought over field logs so we could more closely look at what had happened each time we had lost comms during the match (The radio wasn’t receiving enough power under certain circumstances and was rebooting because of that). Had they not been ready and willing to help us, we would have spent a lot longer trying to diagnose the exact cause of the radio reboot, and trying to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again.

Similarly, the HR at Waterloo was the same HR at ONT dcmp Technology Division, who had delivered what we had believed at the time were bad calls that led to us losing quaterfinals. He found one of our team members and wanted to both apologize for the circumstances at district champs last year, and also thank the people who were in the question box for maintaining their gracious professionalism despite the circumstances surrounding that situation. We hadn’t gotten the chance to talk to him after quarterfinals, because there was an ice storm and we had to get home. Hearing that from a volunteer who is so easy to villainize after the fact helped, even if we had gotten over it long ago.

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At the Granite State District event last season my team had one of my favorite interactions with a RI ever. We had assembled one of our components in the wrong orientation which was causing a hiccup during inspection. The inspector, who was also a team mentor, was brilliant with my kids and showed them what was wrong, why it was wrong, and why it needed correction. He fielded just about any pneumatics related question they threw at him and gained quite a lot of knowledge. Wish I had gotten his name, great experience from his inspection.

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Not a specific example but I would like to say that Nathan Los (I don’t know how to spell his last name) has been the best head ref that I have ever worked with. Both as a student on drive team and as a fellow volunteer Nathan has always been kind, personable and fair. For that I am appreciative.

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PNW Nathan Los? Yep, that’s his last name. I had the pleasure of working with him at Champs a couple years back, Turing field.

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@Chandrew if you are out there somewhere it’s Waldo and you did great!

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Yep PNW Nathan Los. Have had the pleasure of getting to know him over the course of five or so seasons. I am extremely happy to see he has recently been helping train a new HR in Oregon and thus far from what I have seen the the new ref has been great with the rulings.

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Volunteers are the most important part of first! They are unpaid heros that do what they do not to go after teams but to do everything in their power to help make sure every team leaves inspired. I was upset to see a lot of the comments in the other thread, even if some we’re legitimate, because it paints a poor picture of our great volunteers. I know I can’t wait to volunteer when I graduate this year and I want people feeling the same way.

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Goodness, I really appreciate the heck out of the volunteers. The ones that I have worked with have been great. I have worked Pit Admin a few times with some great people - but you do see some things. All in all some of the better times at a regional.

Then this one time I was assigned Inspection Manager. That experiment was memorable for all involved. I still have not stopped apologizing for the disaster it was.

Things you need to know:

  1. I have an innate fear of authority, to the point where my tongue swells at times and I blurt out random things.
  2. At the age of 38 I developed allergy to shellfish.
  3. I am highly abstract-random - you would notice this within moments of meeting me. I think. Still crave those delicious little shrimp in jambalaya.

I think that sets the stage for what happened during my incursion as the ‘Inspection Manager’ in Duluth a couple of years ago.

That year Duluth Regionals followed Fat Tuesday. Every year one of our PE teachers brings in her jambalaya leftovers (she is Puerto Rican, makes the best jambalaya) - I had eaten it every year for over a decade. But age and exposure set it and in no short time I was being loaded into the meat wagon sweating, nauseous, and my blood pressure ran 190/120… it was a party. At the emergency room they were out of the ‘regular beds’ so I had to be put into a ‘birthing bed’ complete with stirrups. They shot me up with a small regimen of drugs and at some point my sister (nurse at a different hospital) came in to be with me. She kept asking if I was alright and if I needed to throw up. I guess one of the side effects of the drugs was possible vomiting. My nurse returned in just in time for my stomach to turn over the culprits. She was on the receiving end, just beyond the stirrups.

Funny thing about having your legs in stirrups and needing to vomit - it enhances the velocity of vomit.

I covered her with everything that was in my stomach. She turned to me and stated “well, you weren’t lying about eating sausage”. I couldn’t stop laughing - my sister looked at me and said “you are such an embarrassment”. Fun fact, the attending nurse, the victim, was also one of my soccer players moms - my finest moment as a coach.

The doctor came in and went through everything and then told me that I was to take the next few days off and rest. I told him that I had to get out of there as soon as possible because I had to be in Duluth two hours ago. His statement - one that I still hold dear - “What do I know, I am just a doctor.” My sister’s head was in her hands.

Fast forward to the regional and I was really trying to do my best to do what an Inspection Manager does - manage the inspections. God bless those RI’s and LRI’s - I was a complete disaster. At one point one of the LRI’s (we typically have two at every regional in MN) looked at me from across the table as he sat in my seat and stated: “You know that I am doing your job”. My response was “you know, I really don’t give a crap”. Man, I can blame that response on so many things, but in that moment my fear of authority was suddenly vacant as was my situational awareness.

Per a beneficially mutual agreement between all parties, I have not volunteered since.

But God Bless all of you at that event that year… and I am still very sorry.

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Love you Waldo, thanks!! <3

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+1 to Nathan, the guy is a legend and I always think he deserves it when he wins the volunteer of the year. He even refs at the world championship!

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I know calgames doesn’t have the best reputation but some of the best interactions with volunteers I’ve had have been at calgames. Last year a lot of our seniors who did a lot of the work on our robot had just graduated so we were in a large transition phase during that event. I think our robot inspector could tell that we were in a bit over our heads because we brought 2 broken multimeters and none of us had ever done an inspection before. Our robot inspector walked us through exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it which taught me a lot that was useful this year when I was one of the students responsible for getting the robot inspected. At that same event we had a match where the robot wouldn’t move for 1 match and we couldn’t find the issue. We thought it was due to packet drops or some sort of a field fault so a CSA came over and helped us look through the DS logs to determine it was not some sort of fault with the field (it turned out to be 1 switch on the controller). Most volunteers are amazing and don’t get enough recognition and I hope the bad ones don’t ruin the experience of the students and the relationship between students and volunteers.

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Or current RD in CHS is on point. She’s constantly pushing for positive changes in the program and is very open to criticism and suggestions. She has encouraged me in the past to submit NMIRs because “it makes me a better RD.” Keep up the good work, you’re fighting the good fight.

I’ve also had the pleasure to work with many of our other key volunteers in CHS while running the Rumble in the Roads. We really have some fantastic people running many of our events.

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CIR head ref is by far the best HR I’ve ever interacted with. It is all about the teams for him, he doesn’t care about delaying the event if teams are having problems connecting to the field or get to the field later than normal.

No other HR i’ve ever worked with has ever been like that. This weekend there was at least a 15 min delay in the finals because teams were having issues connecting. Any other ref would have just bypassed that 1 team or made the alliance call in a back up.

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One of our alumni turned right back around and started mentoring and volunteering the instant he got an excuse. We constantly see him at home regionals and to some of us, he’s the legend we’ve always wanted to be. The freshmen love him and whenever they see him they yell out “Hey Big Fletch!”
Thanks volunteers for all your hard work for teams AND FIRST!

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We’ve had great experiences with all our volunteers at SAC and CVR this year. Special shout out to the FTA’s and CSA’s who have helped us diagnose our multitude of comms issues that have plagued our robot this season, y’all are the best!

-Mike

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Agreed, Ben Streeter is the best. Also, I need to shout out to the Koch family who plan and manage CIR for really prioritizing the experience of the teams.

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I’ll jump on the FTA bandwagon. April Riddett was super helpful at several of our events last year and especially at Champs in the Curie division. Easily the nicest FTA I’ve ever worked with.

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A vast majority of my interactions with FIRST volunteers have been extremely positive. I’m going to assume that’s the case for most people. So while this topic is undoubtedly going to be significantly shorter than its negative counterpart, that’s just because people like to complain, and it isn’t representative of FIRST volunteers in general.

I especially like the volunteer culture in Minnesota having volunteered there for 4+ years. Volunteering with a similar group event after event makes the experience much more enjoyable as you build relationships with people!

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At Tippecanoe, the CSAs and FTAs did everything in their power to help us get our custom vision system up (even though they didn’t ultimately solve it, they still helped as much as they could and I’m grateful for that.)

Also at Tippy, every time a card was issued (at least on day two), the reason was announced over the loudspeaker, with the specific rule quoted and an explanation of how the team violated the rule in question. It was really nice to know exactly why you were being penalized (even if nobody likes a match that ends in a red card…)
I don’t know if that’s “above and beyond” but it was nice. Everyone was on the same page as soon as scores were posted.

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