Hello FIRST Alumni,

We are the FIRST Robotics Competition Co-Chief Judge Advisors Allen Bancroft & Cindy Stong. Our role is to help train the FIRST Robotics Competition Judge Advisors across all of the events and to help improve the awards process each year. Just a few weeks ago, we posted on the blog some of the updates we have worked with Headquarters to improve for the 2020 season. We have one other update we wanted to share with you.  We know that many of you are interested in judging and one of our updates impacts your ability to do just that.

In the past, the highest age requirements in our program for volunteers were for the Judges (25) and Judge Advisors (30). This year, we have lowered the age requirements for Judges to 23 and Judge Advisors to 26. We do want to ensure that our Judge Advisors have enough judging experience to lead the judges, so we have raised the experience required from 2 years of previous Judging experience to 3 years.

One of the key functions of a Judge is to Inspire. FIRST teams look up to our Judges and we encourage team members to talk to the Judges about their careers, and how they too can pursue a similar path. For this reason, we want the volunteers who serve as Judges to have career experience or be a working professional.

As with all volunteer roles at FIRST, volunteer assignments are assigned based more than just a single criterion. Our Judge Advisors are trained to ensure they have a balanced Judge Panel across many factors to ensure the best possible experience for teams at the event. This includes working with the Volunteer Coordinators who have the hard task of balancing all the volunteers that apply to their event and trying to fill multiple roles, and there may be a need for you in another role.

Judging is a great way to give back and stay involved and we encourage you to apply if you fit the criteria above. We look forward to seeing more FIRST Alumni Judging at events! 

If you have any questions or comments you can reach out to FIRST at volunteer@firstinspires.org.

Thank You,

Allen Bancroft & Cindy Stong – FIRST Robotics Competition Co-Chief Judge Advisors