We would like to share our thanks and appreciation to Jon Zawislak for his extraordinary dedication as a Global Head Referee. Jon has been involved with FIRST® since 2003 where he participated on his high school FIRST® Robotics Competition Team MOE 365 his senior year and has been volunteering for FIRST since. Jon has held roles for FIRST Robotics Competition events such as Queuer, Lead Queuer, Referee, and Head Referee. He has been a Head Referee since 2014, a Senior Head Referee from 2016 – 2019, and has been serving as one of our Global Head Referees since 2019. Thank you, Jon, for your decades of service as an event volunteer and team mentor!
New Global Head Referee
We also want to welcome our new FIRST Robotics Competition Global Head Referee - Andrew Corrington! Andrew joins Dr. Aidan Browne as the Global Head Referees for FIRST Robotics Competition
Andrew first got involved with FIRST during his senior year of high school as part of FIRST Robotics Competition Team 292's inaugural season in 1999. The experience helped shape his career goals and ultimately influenced his decision to attend Purdue University. After graduation, Andrew started volunteering at STEM events including FIRST.
In his professional career, Andrew serves as Vice President of Technology Solutions at eimagine, where he leads teams delivering application development, cloud, data, and AI solutions. Over the past 20+ years, he has worked with organizations across the public and private sectors to align technology investments with business outcomes and drive meaningful transformation.
Outside of work, Andrew enjoys attending auto racing events, enjoying board games with friends, and volunteering in his community.
New Senior Head Referees
In addition to our Global Referees, FIRST has also had Senior Head Referees who assist in identifying best practices, developing appropriate training material, communicating with Referees and Head Referees, and providing input into rule and process changes as needed to facilitate the season’s gameplay. We are excited to welcome two new Senior Head Referees, Troy Douglas and Kevyn Hollowell!
Troy
Troy Douglas is a proud alum of FIRST Robotics Competition Team 270, The Falcons and has remained actively involved with FIRST for nearly two decades. Throughout his volunteer career, Troy has mentored multiple FIRST Robotics Competition teams in addition to supporting numerous FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge teams. He began serving as a FIRST Robotics Competition Referee in 2007 and became a Head Referee in 2015 and has served as a Head Referee in multiple countries helping to support some of our newer international events.
Troy earned both a Bachelor of Engineering and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Stony Brook University in 2012. Professionally, he has spent the past 11 years with Festo, where he works as a Project Engineer designing custom industrial automation systems and solutions.
Kevyn
Kevyn Hollowell started with FIRST through FIRST® LEGO® League when he was in middle school in 2001 and then joined FIRST Robotics Competition Team THRUST 1501 in 2003. In 2007, Kevyn joined Purdue FIRST Programs at Purdue University, where he helped plan the Boilermaker Regional. Kevyn began refereeing in 2008 and became a Head Referee in 2014 in Las Vegas. He has since moved to Texas in 2019 and he continues to Head Ref both in Las Vegas and Texas.
Professionally, Kevyn works for ExxonMobil in their corporate aviation department as a Buyer writing contracts and purchasing aircraft parts for their aircraft fleet. He also is a private pilot and aircraft mechanic.
Troy & Kevyn join Terrell Burch (from South Carolina) and Lori Verbrugge (from Michigan) as our Senior Head Referees for the 2027 season.