This was my first time Judge Advising an FLL tournament. No experience in FLL judging prior at all. Typically, judge advisors have some sort of robotics judging experience, but in this scenario, I had no experience at all. This was our first year since COVID-19 and the passing of our lead mentor Dave Emer (Rest In Peace) running a FLL tournament at Mary Ward once again. We had done many tournaments in the past (2015-2019), then took a break from COVID, and this was our first one back.
Since it was a new thing for everyone, the expectations we set among us key volunteers was relatively low.
This year, I duo-judge advised with my good friend Khalil. We didn’t really know what we were doing, but I soon found out that judging was becoming a thing I loved.
I found out I loved the little intricacies that came with judging. The fact that FIRST Robotics themselves came up with an entire process, handbook, and how to go about judging (and even judge advising) was an amazing thing that attracted me. Something about recipes and standardization is what gets me really excited about things like this. There is a whole judging process, a way to fill out rubrics, a way to allocate awards, and an entire playbook on how to be a good Judge Advisor. This made me really love judging. And besides, being out in the field with all the noisy teams isn’t something that excited me anyways. Being with the adults, and being on the side of the judging panels where the teams will present to you in their best behaviour is an honest great compromise for me to get involved in things like this.
My first year judge advising was a great one, and became a snowball falling down a hill that led me to be a robotics judge for years to come.