Although I didn't participate in this year's VEX V5 game as a competitor, I still wanted to help and get involved in the VEX community. Therefore, I decided to volunteer as the scorekeeper referee, a role that helps with scoring matches while watching out for rule violations.
I really enjoy watching matches and analyzing different team's abilities. In so doing, it feels like I am understanding the match from a god's perspective, which is a completely different view from a team's perspective.
In the two-day volunteering, the first day is where middle school students compete, and the second day is for high school teams. Volunteers arrive at 11 am to help set up the competition field. Later we start to do team inspection at around 12pm, during which we have to double-check that the teams' have their robot all set and don't violate any rules.
The main matches start after all teams have their inspection completed, which is around 1:30pm. There are two main fields in total, and referees including scorekeepers keep on switching between the fields to keep the competition going.
All matches ended at around 6pm and we helped pack up some of the tools and replaced all schedules with the ones that will be used for the next day.
In total, I volunteered for 14 hours. I really enjoyed the process. Not only was I able to understand current match strategies and robot designs, but I was also able to meet several friends that I made last year during the competition. It was a spectacular experience and I will continue to volunteer in VEX.
