Trying something new for teams to help their invited guests keep track of the team’s “public” schedule for game rounds,  I have borrowed an idea from our friends at ORTOP for a  “Cheer on Our Team“   schedule card that your team can customize and hand out to families and friends.  If you are of a certain generation, you might call these your Robot’s dance card  

Let me know if you use these and/or how to improve on the idea to make it easier for your team’s supporters to track your team’s robot game matches.

Due to critical circumstances outside of our control,  we will need to postpone the Silicon Valley FLL Championship tournament to 2/18, now a confirmed date.  The event will still be at Independence HS in San Jose.    We are trying to confirm a date just as soon as possible and    We appreciate everyone’s flexibility.

Important deadlines and similar information is emailed out on the norcalfll-announce googlegroup.   If you are not receiving those,  JOIN the group or ask one of the team parents to do so.

A recent email was about upcoming deadlines [ Monday 1/9 for Silicon Valley!] to submit your team’s information including any updated team name, size, affiliation, home city and team photo and robot photo that are used in the tournament program book and in copies of the schedules, etc.

In addition,  I mentioned (too briefly) about receiving nomination letters for two of the Special Recognition awards:  Adult Coach/Mentor and Youth Mentor awards.   We would like to receive written input _ahead of time_ from team members about their coach and/or mentor so that this can be evaluated at the championship tournament itself.

On a related awards note,  it is important to recognize the  Championship award list will NOT be the same as for the qualifiers.    We will be handing out a total of 22 FLL Core awards and 2 Judges awards and 3 Special Recognition awards and 6 Kids Choice awards.

The FLL Core awards will include 1st and 2nd place for each of the following core awards:

Champion’s Award,    Robot Performance,  plus the individual awards from each of the 3 elements of  FLL:
Robot Awards {Mechanical Design,  Programming,  Strategy & Innovation}
Project Awards {Research,  Innovation Solution, Presentation}
Core Values Awards {Inspiration, Teamwork,  Gracious Professionalism}

Plus the special recognition awards:  one each of Outstanding Volunteer and Adult Coach/Mentor and Youth Mentor.

Finally,  since this is confusing people.  Yes, all 4 Northern California championships received an invitation to this year’s World Festival.  This invitation goes to the first place Champion’s Award winning team.  If the team declines their invite (it is expensive, multiple days, etc),  it will automatically go to the 2nd place Champion’s Award winning team.  If the second place team declines, then it goes to a lottery for any award-winning team at that tournament.  Note that we have not seen any team decline any opportunity unless they were also invited to one of the Open Championships and had to make a choice  – this year there are 3  (scroll to bottom) but note that we have not heard if we have received any invitations!  I hope so as I know that we have teams that love to participate in these opportunities.

I am pleased to let everyone know that the NorCal Championship tables will be brand new this season and are almost ready for action.   Our previous ones were getting a little “long in the tooth” as they say.    We are likely to be looking for new homes for the old ones as our storage facility is stuffed to the rafters already.

IMPORTANT:  These tables will be built to the new “side wall” standard with 2x3s and not 2x4s.   This means that if the team’s robot uses the side walls in navigation,  they need to make sure that they are not relying on the higher side wall.

As we introduced the last few years, we will be holding a separate “Kid’s Choice Awards”  as part of each of the Nor Cal FLL Championship tournaments.   These are awards where the team members themselves vote on who will win – note that teams can not vote for themselves in any category.  These optional, fun awards are completely outside of the standard FLL awards.

. Favorite robot or attachment
. Coolest project
. Favorite team chant / song / cheer
. Favorite pit design
. Favorite team costume
. Best team “giveaway”