FTC:Judging

Judging at tournaments is split into two parts, the judges’ interview and pit judging.

Judges’ Interview

The judges’ interview is the first part of judging at an FTC tournament.

Teams will have a total of 15 minutes to give information to the judges about them and their season. The first 5 minutes is uninterrupted time for the team to talk about their season and what they accomplished. The last 10 minutes are given to the judges to ask questions.

Tips

• Focus on giving information about the most important parts of your season while also touching on the other parts of your season so that judges want to ask more questions
• Avoid awkward pauses after a judge asks a question
• If you don’t know the answer to the question right away, start by rephrasing the question and then you can pass it off to someone else if you don’t know the answer
• Don’t be afraid to start answering and then pass it off to someone else who has more knowledge on the subject
• Try to get everyone to talk during the last 10 minutes when judges are asking questions
• Try to answer questions in a way that allows your team to branch out and give more information to possibly answer questions the judges were going to ask
• Don’t interrupt or disagree with other team members during the judging instead, either politely correct them or continue on with the questions

Pit Judging

Pit judging is the second part of judging at an FTC tournament.

After Qualifying Matches start, pairs or groups of judges will come to the pit area to interview teams further. The questions the judges ask during pit judging will be to further evaluate teams related to a specific award, but they will not explicitly tell a team which award they are evaluating for. The judges will then take the information from all of the teams and decide which teams will receive each award.

Tips

• Keep 2-3 team members at the pit at all times because judges can come at any time once Qualification Matches start
• Have a quick way to contact all members when a judge arrives so the whole team can answer questions
• Remember what other team members said so that information isn’t repeated too much
• Try to figure out what the question behind the question is and answer that appropriately
• Have an extra copy of the Engineering Portfolio (and Engineering Notebook if you have one) at the pit
• Reference the Engineering Portfolio and other content at the pit to help answer questions
• Have props available like part iterations to help answer questions
• Don’t interrupt or disagree with other team members during the judging instead, either politely correct them or continue on with the questions