Hello Teams and Volunteers,
Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the coming New year! This is the 11th in the continuing series of Pennsylvania FIRST Robotics emails. If you think you may have missed any of our previous email blasts, they can be found on our website in the COMMUNICATION Archives.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/communications/email-archive
his email is to update you on the progress of the season so far as well as additions to our event schedule, namely Dean’s List Virtual Interviews and the date and location for the State Championship, now posted on our 2022-2023 Season Event site.
Last weekend we completed the first two of nine Qualifiers at Coatesville Senior High School; the Eastern and Red & Black Qualifiers. Thue were two fun filled days with 23 teams competing on Saturday and 16 teams on Sunday. We had awesome volunteers both days as well and would like to thank again our hosts FTC Teams 13669 Raiderbots and 20094 Raiderbots Squared and coaches Andy Moscarelli and Octavia Warren-Ward for their perfect planning and leadership. We will post the details of the event soon, but would like to congratulate our advancing teams in this email:
Eastern Qualifier:
Inspire Award Winner – 14423 RoboCorns, Exton, PA
Winning Alliance Captain – 13669 Raiderbots, Coatesville, PA
Inspire Award 2nd Place – 7423 Flaming Phoenix, Kennett Square, PA
Winning Alliance 1st Team Selected – Red Tornadoes, Lancaster, PA
Red and Black:
Inspire Award Winner – 7244 Out of the Box Robotics, Thorndale, PA
Winning Alliance Captain – 8393 The Giant Diencephalic BrainSTEM Robotics Team, Badan, PA
Winning Alliance 1st Team Selected – Green Lemons, Kennett Square, PA
Updating future January events; invitations to Waitlisted Teams for the Southwest, South Central and Blue & White Qualifiers were sent out last Tuesday and Accept/Decline responses are necessary by 8:00PM today, Dec. 23rd if invited teams want to join these events. If not, we will continue to invite teams further down the waitlist, by date and time stamp, until the events are filled to a maximum of 24 teams. We will then send out invitations for the following season events next week. Invitations will also go out for teams on the wait list for the Philadelphia and Red Tornado Qualifiers.
As noted in our last email blast the Philadelphia Qualifier, this event is created to be near exclusive to serve Philadelphia City based teams and a few from surrounding towns who may have resource and travel limitations or can only attend one local qualifier. We have also expanded the number of teams at this event and hope to fit as many teams as we can. We will be working very closely with the Philadelphia Robotics Coalition and the venue, right now at Central High School, to assure that we can maximize attendance. More to come.
We will continue to process event registration requests per or policy.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/event-registration/processing-event-registration-requests
Dates where we will start sending out invitations to P2 and above teams are therefore:
- Philadelphia Qualifier – Send invitations starting Monday Jan 2nd, 2023
- Red Tornado Qualifier – Send invitations starting Monday Jan 2nd, 2023
- Lehigh Valley and Green/Gold Qualifiers – Send invitations starting Monday Jan 9th ,2023
Please carefully read the Event Participation Policy for additional information
https://www.ftcpenn.org/event-registration/event-participation-policy
Additions to the Schedule:
Dean’s List Interviews – Saturday February 25, 2023 – Sunday February 26, 2023.
As with last year, the interviews will be virtual and scheduled and executed through the FTC Scoring System or equivalent. Interviews will primarily take place on Saturday and Sunday, Feb 25th and 26th, 2023. If other days or times needed to accommodate Interview Judges and Students, we will schedule accordingly.
Nominations by Coaches and Mentors are due to FIRST by January 15th, 2023!
Please reference the FTC Dean’s List Nomination Guide and instructions for detailed information. Link:
https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc/deans-list
Carefully note that a mentor or coach of the team who is unrelated to the student being nominated can submit the nomination for the Dean’s List Award. This can either be done by the lead coach 1 or 2, or by a role called Dean’ List Award Submitter.
Pennsylvania FTC Championship – Saturday March 4, 2023
Venue: Saucon Valley Middle School, 2095 Polk Valley Rd, Hellertown, PA 18055
This is the same event site as last season Championship We are currently planning a 36 team, 3 field, but single division event. More to come on this:
https://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2022-2023-season/pennsylvania-ftc-championship
As always, we are in need of Volunteers for the upcoming Qualifiers in January
We would love all of you to personally join us and to recruit aggressively and widely to assist us in expanding our reach. Volunteer opportunities abound! Please find this schedule for all seasonal events on our website. As always, we welcome back our awesome regional volunteers who participated with us in past years, but also welcome new volunteers from family, friends, the community and businesses alike. Please know that this is also a great opportunity for coaches, mentors and parents to get an insider’s perspective of how FTC events are conducted in our State and region. The perspectives and guidance gained will also translate into helping your own team and students to be successful. If you are already registered to volunteer, then thank you!
As with past years, we use the FIRST Event Volunteer Registration system for all of our events. Volunteering for an event is one of the options on your personal FIRST Dashboard on the http://www.firstinspires.org website. General Instructions detailed below.
Volunteer roles are defined in the link provided below. We welcome volunteers in all capacities, but especially in key roles such as Judging, Referees and Inspectors.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/volunteer/volunteer-roles
As always, please let us know if you have any questions or require additional information.
All the best,
Tom 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