Hello Teams and Volunteers,
Welcome to Pennsylvania FIRST Robotics eighth email blast of the 2024-2025 Season! Previous emails can be found on our website in the COMMUNICATION Archives.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/communications
As of today, we have 104 confirmed and secured teams registered this season with another 13 in progress. This is an amazing showing; however, we encourage teams to continue to register as soon as possible and especially before the Oct 1st opening of PA FTC Qualifier registration. 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
Coaches Calls:
We are very excited about this season’s challenge…Into the Deep! Since our kickoffs on Sep 7th we have held two Coaches Calls that were well attended and informative. Coaches joined virtually through our GoTo meeting app and had great questions. As such, we have added 6 more Coaches Calls to this season that will commence on Wed Oct 2nd and will be held every other Wednesday through December 18th. Please consider attending as this is a very dynamic season and we have our core volunteers on hand that can answer nearly every question you may have. The conference link is the same for all of the calls. Registration is not required, please just join in. See links on our Event schedule. Coaches Calls are also recorded so you may access the specific recordings on the applicable event page – Event Materials / Event Recording.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2024-2025-season
Grant Applications:
Some of you have asked: Applications for the two PA FIRST Robotics administered Grants announced and detailed in our Email Blast #4 dated Aug 12, 2024 will open tomorrow, Friday Sep 19th. The grant opportunities are provided by the Arconic Foundation and Google.org. There will be a separate email and link sent to this and last season’s teams only, once the applications are open. Please reference the Email Blast for more information on grant criteria.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/email-archive/13615
PA Season Updates:
Registration for Workshops and Scrimmages is open now!
There are 4 new workshops added, all to be held at Central High School in Philadelphia, one per month commencing next Tuesday, Sep 24th, 2:00 – 5:00 pm
We have also added one Scrimmage, Sat Nov 23, 2024: Longhorn Roundup Scrimmage to be held at the Charles F Patton Middle School, Kennett Square.
Qualifier Registration does not open until October 1st, 2024 at 12:00 noon to assure that we have a substantial number of teams registered with FIRST before we open up PA events. See registration notes above.
See Events page for details.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2024-2025-season
Event Registration:
https://www.ftcpenn.org/event-registration
FIRST HQ Resources:
As we stated at kickoff, the FTC Manual would be updated every other week on a Thursday. Well, today was the day for update 01.
The Q&A System opened up a few days ago on Sep 16th.
Please be sure to register a member of your team to apply for Team Updates
To access the three subjects above please go to the following link:
https://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/ftc/game-and-season-info
Tips for Teams (Global)
FIRST Tech Challenge community members and information seekers can now type ftc.game into their browser and be directed straight to our Game and Season Materials. This is a very cool and easy feature.
Please check this out: INTO THE DEEP presented by RTX Technology Updates YouTube video by AJ Foster AJ details season and game updates in an informative and fun video.
Also, there is a new Global Blog for FTC that team can tap into, also very informative. “Submerge into the Competition Resources” Blog post
Team Webinar schedule. We highly suggest you or your members join: 24-25 FIRST Tech Challenge Team Webinar Schedule
Thank you for your attention,
Sincerely,
Tom Zawislak and the FTC PA Team
Pennsylvania FIRST® Robotics
FIRST Tech Challenge® Program Delivery Partner
phone: (302) 383-9925
email: ftc@pennfirst.org
Website: www.FTCPenn.org