Good day, Teams and Volunteers,
Welcome to the twelfth 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 11 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
York Qualifiers – Moving from Nov 22nd/23rd to Jan 17th/18th, 2026
Due to low registration rates and anticipated participation going forward we have decided to move the 2 York Qualifiers from November to January. This also allows all the PA teams and students more time to prepare their robots for robust competition.
New dates:
South Central Pennsylvania Qualifier – Sat Jan 17th, 2026
Greyhound Sprint Qualifier – Sun Jan 18th, 2026
The host teams and venue are not being changed. We will still be at York Country Day School and FTC Teams 9242 GearHounds and 21324 Hackin’ Hounds are our hosts. We want to especially thank head Coach Elizabeth Charleston and the school Administration for this accommodation.
What does this mean to the November qualifiers Registered and Waitlisted Teams?
In implementing this change, we will allow November York Qualifier Registered and former Waitlisted teams, whether you accepted or declined an invitation, time to make alternative choices. As such, we have temporarily modified our registration form and process. York teams will have the next 7 days or until Thursday, Oct 30th, 2025 to make changes to their original choices and select alternative Qualifiers. No worries as your original registration date and time stamps are being retained and utilized in this process.
If your team was registered for a November York Qualifier, your team will be added to the Registered List of your replacement Qualifier (if space is available). If your team was still on the Waitlist or declined an invitation to compete in a November York Qualifier, your team will be added to the Waitlist of your replacement Qualifier at the same Preference and timestamp as your November York Qualifier.
Please go to the event Registration page and select the radio button York Qualifiers – Registration Update. Advancing through the form, the questions following allow you to select a replacement qualifier for your original York qualifier. You may choose any of the 12 qualifiers, including the rescheduled South Central Pennsylvania Qualifier (1/17/2026) and Greyhound Sprint Qualifier (1/18/2026). There are simple drop-downs that will automatically move your team to the new choice in our registration system where it will be acknowledged.
https://www.ftcpenn.org/event-registration
Note to all teams: Qualifier Registration will be closed to other teams during this period to allow us to implement these changes. We will reopen Qualifier Registration for all teams on Friday Oct 31st which will include the invitations to Waitlisted teams for the Lancaster Area and Blue Streak Qualifiers Dec 6th and 7th respectively.
If you have Volunteered for either or both Qualifiers, we will be reaching out to you directly to determine whether you want to continue to volunteer for York Qualifiers or if you want to make other choices. We will implement the changes once the Scoring and Volunteer Management Systems are updated.
Thank you all for your patience and understanding. We want all of our teams to have the best experience possible this DECODE™ FTC PA season. We think this change enhances that experience but especially ensures that teams will get as many official plays as possible as we retain the originally planned 48 slots for the weekend.
Please email ftc@pennfirst.org and ftc.events@pennfirst.org if you have any questions or concerns.
All the best,
Tom Zawislak and Dave Hackett
Pennsylvania FIRST® Robotics
FIRST Tech Challenge® Program Delivery Partner
phone: (302) 383-9925
email: ftc@pennfirst.org
Website: www.FTCPenn.org