Good day, Teams and Volunteers,
Welcome to the eleventh email blast for the upcoming PA FIRST Tech Challenge Season. Please liberally and broadly share this email with your parents, students, friends, co-workers and acquaintances in and outside of the FIRST robotics community.
Also, if you missed our first 10 blasts of the season, please go to our Communications page to reference Announcements and Archive Emails for this and all past seasons.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/communications
We hope all is going well with you in your planning, strategizing and building of robots and student skills. We know you are all top-notch mentors and coaches so best of luck and progress.
I want to thank you all for your prompt event registrations to both FIRST as new rookie or veteran teams and to PA FTC Events. As of this morning we have 143 registered teams across the state with about 85% of them registered for either scrimmages, workshops and/or qualifiers. If you have not registered for events yet it is never too late. There are many slots open to select your first preference and beyond.
Upcoming and Event Registration:
There are still 9 slots open for the Ramp Riot Scrimmage held at Wissahickon High School next Saturday, October 18th. With only 5 teams registered so far this is going to be a very laid-back event. Please consider registering and coming out even if your robot is not fully ready or a work-in-progress. You can continue to work on your robot, team skills and network while there and if your team wants a little help getting over the hump, there will be other teams and volunteers who would be glad to help.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2025-2026-season/ramp-riot-scrimmage
Also upcoming, and per our registration policy of inviting Waitlisted Teams 6 weeks before an event, we will begin sending invitations to the South Central Pennsylvania Qualifier and Greyhound Sprint Qualifiers scheduled for Sat, Nov 22 and Sun Nov 23rd. If you are on the Waitlist for either of these please be sure to check your emails and respond accordingly. See the following link for more information on Waitlist information and upcoming dates.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/event-registration/waitlist-invitations
The PA Event schedule, Registration and Registration policies including how Registrations are processed can be accessed through the following links:
https://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2025-2026-season
https://www.ftcpenn.org/event-registration
Call for Volunteers:
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! We welcome new volunteers from family, friends, the community and businesses alike. Please recognize that this is 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.
You will find that most all those who want to attend would rather be directly engaged in the festivities than gather splinters in the bleachers. Our experience is that people truly do appreciate direct participation in the event and explore contributing in special ways, as well as have fun! Also, not all roles require attendance for all of the competition days of competition, so there may be flexibility that we can manage. Of course, if you are already registered to volunteer, then thank you, but please continue recruiting.
We cite the critical roles with vacancies below with a summary description to gain interest. Full descriptions can be found on the FIRST website under General Volunteer Roles: https://www.firstinspires.org/community/volunteers/roles.
Specific to Pennsylvania we seek:
Judges (no direct team affiliation or Conflict of Interest for the event you are volunteering for, and age 21 and over); Referees; Score Trackers; FTA and FTAA’s; Robot and Field Inspectors; Queuers; Field Reset; Load In/Out and set up crew; Team and Volunteer Check In
General Instructions:
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 FIRST Inspires website.
To access the FIRST Event Volunteer Registration system:
Browse to http://www.firstinspires.org
Click Log In in the upper right-hand corner. If you already have a FIRST account, enter your FIRST username and password, and click LOG IN.
If you do not have a FIRST account, click Register in the upper right-hand corner, then fill out the account form.
Once on your personal Dashboard, select VOLUNTEER REGISTRATION and then EVENT VOLUNTEERING.
To narrow the available events to Pennsylvania FTC events, under Event Filters select FIRST Tech Challenge, United States, Pennsylvania; optionally enter dates and/or event names and then click Apply Filters. Select the event on the right-hand side and click Volunteer. Follow the prompts to select the roles you are interested in.
This link has several good resources, including a Volunteer Registration Step by Step Guide if you have further questions about the Volunteer Registration system.
https://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/volunteer/general-volunteer-resources
Pennsylvania Youth Protection
Please see our last email Blast #10 for details regarding the required PA clearances
https://www.ftcpenn.org/email-archive/18975
Please direct questions about PA clearances to your Program Delivery Partner Tom Zawislak at ftc@pennfirst.org.
Thank you and continued luck this season.
Pennsylvania FIRST® Robotics
FIRST Tech Challenge® Program Delivery Partner
phone: (302) 383-9925
email: ftc@pennfirst.org
Website: www.FTCPenn.org