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Arena Judges

This guide is for the judges scoring live arena performance.

If you want a one-page handout for event day, use the Arena Judges Card.

Your job​

You are scoring what a team actually does in the arena. In practice, that usually means the navigation and sensors rubrics, depending on your assignment. Your job is to watch carefully, score fairly, stay consistent from team to team, and agree with your judging partner before anything is saved. At many arenas, two judges share one scoring device, with one person tapping and the other verifying.

What you will see​

After login, you will land on Judging. From there, you will see the rubric tabs you are allowed to score, a list of teams, a Schedule button, and possibly My Awards if you were assigned a manual award. When you open a team, you will see the scoring form itself, including the categories and scoring items, a notes box, a no-show checkbox, and a save button.

Before the event starts​

Before the event starts, log in with your passphrase and confirm that you can see the arena rubric or rubrics you were assigned. It helps to open one team page ahead of time so you know how the form is laid out, and if you are sharing a device, decide in advance who is entering scores and who is verifying them. Keeping the Schedule page nearby can also help when you need to confirm team order.

For each team​

For each team, open the correct rubric and team before or as the run begins, watch the run closely, and talk through the scoring with your partner. Enter the agreed scores, add a short note if something unusual happened, review the whole form together, and save before moving on.

Working with facilitators​

The facilitator controls the live run timing, and you control scoring. In other words, wait for the facilitator to begin the run, ask for clarification if you missed part of a demonstration, and do not press timing buttons yourself.

Staying consistent​

Consistency matters more than speed. A good rhythm is to identify what the team achieved, translate that to the rubric item, confirm it with your partner, enter it once, and save it once. If you are torn between two scores, re-read the item description and choose the score that best matches the rubric wording rather than the team's effort level.

No-shows and unusual cases​

If a team truly does not appear for that scoring opportunity, confirm that with the lead or facilitator before marking anything as a no-show. Leave a note when it would be helpful, and save only once you are sure. If a run is interrupted for safety, let the facilitator and safety officer resolve the floor situation before worrying about the form.

What not to do​

Do not let one judge silently fill out the whole form alone, do not score from memory long after the run if you can avoid it, do not operate arena timing from a judge account, and do not argue with teams about scores on the floor.

If something goes wrong​

If the device freezes, write the scores down immediately, tell the head admin, and enter them as soon as the device is working again. If you save the wrong score, stop and tell the head admin or judging lead rather than trying to improvise a fix on the spot.