Hello Teams and Volunteers,
Welcome to Pennsylvania FIRST Robotics second email blast of the 2024-2025 Season! The new overall theme for all programs is FIRST DIVESM presented by Qualcomm. The variation on that theme for FTC is INTO THE DEEPSM, once again proudly presented by RTX and launching September 7, 2024.
This first email blast this season was dedicated to new season registration, but also to commemorate the results of the 2023-2024 season. Congratulations again on the past FTC season to all of the PA Teams. As always, previous emails can be found on our website in the COMMUNICATION Archives.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/communications
Team Registration with FIRST
Please be reminded that Team REGISTRATION with FIRST opened on Wed May 15th, 2024. New this season, and for your reference, Rookie teams numbers will start at # 25609. FIRST FTC will no longer issue temporary team numbers as well. New teams will get a permanent number at registration regardless of payment status. So far, we only have 13 confirmed and secured teams registered with another 5 in progress. We look forward to our usual flurry of registrations in the upcoming weeks. Please let us know if you have any questions or require assistance with the FIRST registration process.
https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc
PA Events Posted
Now the exciting news! Our PA website has been updated with the upcoming schedule of EVENTS for the 2024-2025 season. This includes confirmed live kick-off (Sep 7th, 2024) scrimmage and Qualifier dates and locations. Please note that we are again planning 10 Qualifiers this season over 5 weekends in different regions of the state. We sincerely hope that this helps you plan your selected events and potential travel earlier than any past season. Regardless of this advance visibility, Qualifier Registration does not open until October 1st, 2024 to assure that we have a substantial number of teams registered with FIRST before we open up PA events.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2024-2025-season
Website Updates
We’ve made several updates to the website. Maps have been added to the Teams, the FTC Events, and the individual event pages. The Teams page now recognizes teams who reach specific season registration milestones, plus the Teams Table now includes a Season Count column. And finally, there is a refinement in the results when you click on a team number on any page. See this announcement on our website for details.
Grant Opportunities
In our next blast we will also address upcoming Grant opportunities administered by Pennsylvania FIRST Robotics, especially to start new FTC teams for middle school aged students across the state.
That is enough for now. As you can tell, we are excited about the upcoming season and, again, team involvement will be a huge part of our success and fun. Thank you for your attention and there will be more to come.
Sincerely,
Tom Zawislak and the FTC PA Team