Robot game advice

(From Cathy Sarisky, 7th year FLL coach)

Some more general advice on prep for robot game on tournament day:

1) Make sure your kids know to look at the table when they arrive and to ASK about anything that doesn't look right. Setup errors happen.

2) Make sure your kids know not to touch the table when the run is over, until they and the ref totally agree on scoring. Don't pick up the robot, and definitely don't 'help' reset the table.

3) Make sure your kids know that one of them (your best rules nerd/detail-oriented kid) should review every little bit of scoring. Most tournaments score by walking through the missions and marking state for each one. (How many energy units have been released from the windmill & are not touching? Is the TV up? Is there an energy unit in the TV tray? etc) Your kids and their ref should agree on the state of the table. Refs do miss things and make errors. If your kids see a problem or disagree with the ref on the state of the table, the ONLY time to contest it is right there at the table. It's appropriate to politely point out a scoring error. It's also for the kids to ask for the head ref, if they can't agree with the table ref.

3a) If the score that's posted doesn't match the agreed-on state of the table, it's fine to ask about a data entry error later (like as soon as the score posts, not after the tournament). The scorekeeper can go back to the original score sheet (if they're on paper) and check for an error converting the table state to a score or getting the score into the system. What they can't do after the kids sign off is fix the table state, because no one knows what it was once the table has been reset.