Thanks to all of you new (and experienced) coaches!  FLL doesn't happen
without your support for your team members.

The most important thing that you can learn about the Robot Game, that you
should teach to your team is that
*Only The Written Rules/Missions/Updates Matter*.   (This will be written
in the World Class game rules in some form.)

Teams that rely on videos rather than becoming extremely familiar with the
Rules tend to have unexpected surprises when they get to a tournament.
Even the official Robot Game videos have usually been wrong about
something.  Plus, if your team wants to discuss a ruling with a referee at
a tournament, then the only practical source of information about the game
is what is written down.

And, of course, we won't actually know the details of the World Class rules
are until they are released a month from now.  Something always changes
from year to year.  For example, there was a Junk Penalty introduced last
year in Nature's Fury for Strategic Objects left on the field.  Will there
be a Junk Penalty this year?  Will it be the same, or different?  We won't
know for sure until we see the Rules [and the Updates....]


After all those caveats, however, this is a really good suggestion.  We
cannot make "official videos" to explain the rules, but we can make videos
to help your team understand how to interpret the rules, and how the rules
will be applied.

I'll look around to see if I can find someone to help me with my
rudimentary video-production skills, and I'll solicit topics from you, and
we'll try to make some short videos available to assist you with your
coaching and mentoring for this FLL season.

Steve Scherr
VA-DC FLL Referee Advisor

P.S.  FYI, the Gravity Test is important every year.  Often a team will
violate it without really thinking about it.  Strategic/Precision Stop is
uncommon.  There has to be a mission where it makes a difference.
Strategic Objects are really helpful, but they are so varied (and specific
to team creativity), that we'd really have to pick out parts of the
definition to focus on.



On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Skip Morrow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> This is my first year coaching. I have read the rules from Nature's Fury
> and watched the videos that explain the missions and challenges, but what I
> don't see are videos that explain the rules. Some of the rules would be a
> lot easier to explain with video rather than just the written rules. Is
> there any chance that this year there could be an official video that
> explains the rules?
>
> Some of the rules that I think could benefit from this are:
> Gravity test
> Strategic object usage
> Strategic/precision stop
> And a few others.
>
> Now, maybe these are obscure rules that rarely come into play. I don't
> know--I've never done this before. In which case, these particular rules
> may not be a big deal. But I still think an official video would help out.
>
> Skip Morrow
> .
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