Hi Teams,
We hope you are all doing well this week and continue to be excited and engaged in the PA FIRST Tech Challenge season because we have now completed two of the 3 League Tournaments! We are pretty confident that the Western League teams have been hard at work preparing for their time in the FTC PA spotlight and wish them all the best of luck this week.
At this past Sunday’s conclusion of the Eastern League Tourney eight (8) more teams have advanced to the PA State Championship, to be held Wed-Sun May 19th -23rd. Congratulations to all of the participating teams for their stellar performance but especially to those Judged and Robot performance leaders and award winners. Awesome job! Please go to our EVENT page to see the results of the Eastern and Central League Tournament and congratulate your fellow teams.
http://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2020-2021-season/eastern-league-tournament
http://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2020-2021-season/central-league-tournament
As stated, we are now looking forward to the Western League competitions which will commence with our Opening Ceremonies tomorrow night, April 20th, at 7:30PM. Of course, all teams are welcome to join regardless of the League you are associated with. Again, please go to our EVENT page to access the link for the Opening Ceremonies and these coming weeks AGENDA.
http://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/2020-2021-season/western-league-tournament
IMPORTANT note for the WESTERN LEAGUE TEAMS – The Judging Schedules for your teams for Saturday, April 24th are already assigned and posted for both the Morning Interviews and Afternoon Follow-up Pit-style interviews. You may access them by entering the Remote Scoring Cloud-based system, the same location where you have and will continue to post your robot field performance scores. The link is embedded in the Western Tournament Agenda page (above). Please let us know of any issues accessing your schedules.
And the same message as last week…We strongly encourage ALL teams to go into their scheduled times and practice joining in using the conferencing tool at your own time and convenience and especially before Saturday assuming your team members will join from different locations. Please do not worry about conferencing in, practicing and breaking anything. The scheduled judge times assigned to you are unique to your team so enter often and PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!
ACTIONS for Primary / Secondary Coaches:
- Obtain web conferencing links and share with your team
- Share this email with your team members as well so they have the information necessary to access on their own and be successful
- Upload Judging documents before 7:00AM Saturday. You do have time to continue to work on and improve you Engineering Portfolios and Control Awards, but please be sure to upload these on time and preferably the Friday night before.
There were many lessons learned from the last two weeks of Judge Sessions as were communicated to us by the Central and Eastern teams through a provided post-competition Feedback Form. As such, we have compiled and published a Remote Judging FAQ as guidance for your teams to hopefully avoid many of the challenges experienced by the teams who were judges before you. Please be sure that any of your team members that will be joining the Judge Sessions are up to speed on how to utilize the system and understand the FAQ subject matter. Should you have any questions please reach out to us ASAP.
http://www.ftcpenn.org/ftc-events/remote-judging-faq
Additional to the above, the attached ppt slides for the “Remote Judging via the Remote Scoring System” provides instructions for joining your sessions. We also recorded REMOTE JUDGING SESSION #3 – “Remote Judging via the Remote Scoring System” and it is available for viewing. The link to the video is accessed on our EVENTS page with the event date of the same name, Mar 31 7:30 PM. 2021-03-31 PA FTC Remote Judging via the Remote Scoring System
One last note…we have received and downloaded all of the Nominations for Dean’s List and we have a record number this season! Nice job coaches and mentors. We will be assigning interview schedules (15 minutes) over May 1 and 2 very soon, so please stay posted.
Thank you for your attention and best of luck in your practices and upcoming Matches.
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