Should VEX implement a VAR system

As mentioned above, this could work well where the support exists to make it happen… but may well come at extra expense.

But have a bit of empathy for the hosts of your local 30 team tournament where you’ve got a small team of volunteers giving up a big chunk of their weekend so a bunch of kids can play robot.

Quite frankly, if the volunteers aren’t having fun then they aren’t coming back. They all try to make the right call every time, and they understand that not everyone is going to agree with them every time. But there is a good life lesson in being able to say, “Well, I disagreed with the refs call, but my opinion is irrelevant. One day I’ll be the ref and I’ll be perfect.”

Whining, complaining, and trying to get video replays is not going to make the volunteers happy, nor make the tournament run more smoothly. Teams are allowed to ask for a clarification or explanation, and to politely make a point… but once that is done, thank the ref and move on. The history of sports is the history of missed calls… and if you think you’ve been ‘wronged’, then you can take solace in classic examples such as Diego Maradonna’s “Hand of God”. (It only took FIFA a few years after that to get VAR for the World Cup…)

If you really want to be remembered… and you see that your team has advanced due to a bad call… let the ref know. It’s one thing to have the team that got DQ’ed complain, but to have the their opponents step forward and say, “While we’d very much like to advance, we believe our opponents actions were legal for the following reasons.” The call likely won’t change, but at least you’ll advance with a clear conscience and have gained the respect of the entire tournament for your honesty.