FLL: tournament registration & other important information
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Jill Wilker
Oct 6, 2009, 12:21:30 AM10/6/09
to norcalfll...@googlegroups.com
Topics for today :
1) Tournament Registration Process
2) How to Apply for a tournament
3) Waiver forms to be mailed
4) Tournaments need support
5) Scrimmages
6) Los Altos mailing list
7) Ning site
---
1) Tournament Registration Process:
There are 3 steps to complete your team's registration.
a) Apply for tournament(s) via the gofll.usfirst.org site (see #2 for more info)
b) Pay $50 tournament fee - paypal (preferred method) will be online shortly - can send a check
c) Mail signed waiver forms for all team members and all coaches/mentors (see #3 for more info)
We will post a webpage showing current registration status of all teams starting in a few days.
---
2) How to Apply for a tournament event:
This is a new event registration system for this year, so be patient!
We are opening the registration on Wednesday 10/7 and will be using the Event Group option. If you did not receive the information from FIRST about how to sign up for events, it is posted at: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/fll/content.aspx?id=13256 Your team must be paid and all questions (even those marked optional) must be answered in order to register for an event.
When you login to the http://gofll.usfirst.org site, click on Events. Then, in the Search, pick the Classification of "Qualifying Event". Scroll down to the GROUP section -- you can not register for individual events, you have to register via the group. We have one group for all Nor Cal FLL Qualifying Tournaments - click on the name and then you should see a green tab labeled "Apply for this event group". Click on that. Then, the page will show all qualifying tournaments and at the bottom of the page, you will see the place to identify your choices. (yes, a bit complicated)
You will have the ability to choose 3 options via a pull down menu that lists all tournaments in the Nor Cal group. You should only choose tournaments that you are willing to attend. We will try to give teams their first choice but we have to make sure that all tournaments reach their minimum size of 12 teams. Note that team will only attend 1 first level event.
You will see one "overflow" tournament - if you end up with this tournament option, we may not have an actual tournament to participate in. We are still working on finding at least one additional tournament location - if you can suggest sites, please let us know ASAP.
If your team is not going to compete this year in a tournament, please just send me an email letting me know - if we do not see your team's registration in a few days, we will start trying to confirm with you via phone calls and email just to make sure.
---
3) Waiver forms to be mailed:
To complete registration, your team must pay the registration fee (paypal is preferred - not online yet) and physically mail the waiver forms to Playing At Learning.
Please only send us the team and coach/mentor waivers - we are not set up to handle your team's tournament volunteer.
The form (in PDF) is available in Spanish or English from the Resources Menu at http://www.norcalfll.org
The forms should be physically mailed to : Playing At Learning 42668 Lerwick Street Fremont, CA 94539
We can not accept scanned / email or faxed waivers - FIRST has asked us to collect waivers with original signatures.
Please make sure that your team number is on all forms and that at a minimum on the team member waivers there is the participant's name, year/month of birth (if a team member) plus a parent's signature. The rest of the information is used in aggregated statistics - the additional info is asked by funding agencies - the more information about who FLL is serving, the more opportunity for grants.
---
4) Tournament support.
Prepare your team parents ahead of time, almost all tournaments ask each team to provide a volunteer to help with the day's activities. In addition, we really need help in recruiting "non-affiliated" adults to be part of the referee and judge crew - these can be colleagues, association members, friends-of-friends. Please ask the team parents to help recruit others. This year we will need about 180 judges and 80 referees just in November! The URL to send out is http://www.playingatlearning.org/FLL/volunteer.html and there are a couple of sample letters posted on that page to use in recruiting volunteers.
Finally, we need your help in getting financial support for the Championship tournament - if you can put in a request and/or need help in generating a request letter, let us know. We have request letters that you can customize to ask your company or others that you know that might be willing to help out. If we do not raise enough funds, we will have to increase the tournament fees - it is directly related. The tournament budgets are designed to be a net zero.
---
5) Scrimmages.
Many scrimmages are getting setup - thank you! If you are going to host a scrimmage, let us know so that we can pass this along to our referee crew. We encourage you to post to the norcalfll.ning.com group as well.
---
6) Los Altos area teams and teams expecting to attend the Los Altos tournament must join the Los Altos mailing list called TigerBots for information about their tournament and other related information. To join, visit http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/Tigerbots
---
7) Ning Site We have received a few questions about the number of people actually reading/viewing the information on the norcalfll.ning.com site - we have over 90% of this year's coaches reading/visiting the site and many people read most of the groups without becoming a member of a specific group. Because of this, if you do a "Send Message to Group" option, those that browse the group via the web will not see your message because that option generates an email that gets sent out only to current group members. Instead, we recommend either adding a comment or adding a new discussion in the group so that the message is persistent. In addition, if you have a post that is no longer relevant, you can delete your own posts.
Jill Wilker / Mark Edelman
Playing At Learning (510) 656-8664
Northern California Partner for FTC and FLL
---
1) Tournament Registration Process
2) How to Apply for a tournament
3) Waiver forms to be mailed
4) Tournaments need support
5) Scrimmages
6) Los Altos mailing list
7) Ning site
---
1) Tournament Registration Process:
There are 3 steps to complete your team's registration.
a) Apply for tournament(s) via the gofll.usfirst.org site (see #2 for more info)
b) Pay $50 tournament fee - paypal (preferred method) will be online shortly - can send a check
c) Mail signed waiver forms for all team members and all coaches/mentors (see #3 for more info)
We will post a webpage showing current registration status of all teams starting in a few days.
---
2) How to Apply for a tournament event:
This is a new event registration system for this year, so be patient!
We are opening the registration on Wednesday 10/7 and will be using the Event Group option. If you did not receive the information from FIRST about how to sign up for events, it is posted at: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/fll/content.aspx?id=13256 Your team must be paid and all questions (even those marked optional) must be answered in order to register for an event.
When you login to the http://gofll.usfirst.org site, click on Events. Then, in the Search, pick the Classification of "Qualifying Event". Scroll down to the GROUP section -- you can not register for individual events, you have to register via the group. We have one group for all Nor Cal FLL Qualifying Tournaments - click on the name and then you should see a green tab labeled "Apply for this event group". Click on that. Then, the page will show all qualifying tournaments and at the bottom of the page, you will see the place to identify your choices. (yes, a bit complicated)
You will have the ability to choose 3 options via a pull down menu that lists all tournaments in the Nor Cal group. You should only choose tournaments that you are willing to attend. We will try to give teams their first choice but we have to make sure that all tournaments reach their minimum size of 12 teams. Note that team will only attend 1 first level event.
You will see one "overflow" tournament - if you end up with this tournament option, we may not have an actual tournament to participate in. We are still working on finding at least one additional tournament location - if you can suggest sites, please let us know ASAP.
If your team is not going to compete this year in a tournament, please just send me an email letting me know - if we do not see your team's registration in a few days, we will start trying to confirm with you via phone calls and email just to make sure.
---
3) Waiver forms to be mailed:
To complete registration, your team must pay the registration fee (paypal is preferred - not online yet) and physically mail the waiver forms to Playing At Learning.
Please only send us the team and coach/mentor waivers - we are not set up to handle your team's tournament volunteer.
The form (in PDF) is available in Spanish or English from the Resources Menu at http://www.norcalfll.org
The forms should be physically mailed to : Playing At Learning 42668 Lerwick Street Fremont, CA 94539
We can not accept scanned / email or faxed waivers - FIRST has asked us to collect waivers with original signatures.
Please make sure that your team number is on all forms and that at a minimum on the team member waivers there is the participant's name, year/month of birth (if a team member) plus a parent's signature. The rest of the information is used in aggregated statistics - the additional info is asked by funding agencies - the more information about who FLL is serving, the more opportunity for grants.
---
4) Tournament support.
Prepare your team parents ahead of time, almost all tournaments ask each team to provide a volunteer to help with the day's activities. In addition, we really need help in recruiting "non-affiliated" adults to be part of the referee and judge crew - these can be colleagues, association members, friends-of-friends. Please ask the team parents to help recruit others. This year we will need about 180 judges and 80 referees just in November! The URL to send out is http://www.playingatlearning.org/FLL/volunteer.html and there are a couple of sample letters posted on that page to use in recruiting volunteers.
Finally, we need your help in getting financial support for the Championship tournament - if you can put in a request and/or need help in generating a request letter, let us know. We have request letters that you can customize to ask your company or others that you know that might be willing to help out. If we do not raise enough funds, we will have to increase the tournament fees - it is directly related. The tournament budgets are designed to be a net zero.
---
5) Scrimmages.
Many scrimmages are getting setup - thank you! If you are going to host a scrimmage, let us know so that we can pass this along to our referee crew. We encourage you to post to the norcalfll.ning.com group as well.
---
6) Los Altos area teams and teams expecting to attend the Los Altos tournament must join the Los Altos mailing list called TigerBots for information about their tournament and other related information. To join, visit http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/Tigerbots
---
7) Ning Site We have received a few questions about the number of people actually reading/viewing the information on the norcalfll.ning.com site - we have over 90% of this year's coaches reading/visiting the site and many people read most of the groups without becoming a member of a specific group. Because of this, if you do a "Send Message to Group" option, those that browse the group via the web will not see your message because that option generates an email that gets sent out only to current group members. Instead, we recommend either adding a comment or adding a new discussion in the group so that the message is persistent. In addition, if you have a post that is no longer relevant, you can delete your own posts.
Jill Wilker / Mark Edelman
Playing At Learning (510) 656-8664
Northern California Partner for FTC and FLL
---
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