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.