Qualifier season is upon us... a few reminders/updates

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Jill Wilker

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Oct 30, 2025, 10:40:01 PM10/30/25

to NorCalFLL-announce, NorCal FLL Challenge Staff

Twas the night before the night before Qualifier season starts.... a few updates.

Our Tournament FAQ document for this season has been updated and should help you with final preparations. This is a good document to look over even if you are an experienced coach

Would also highly recommend listening to the 3 webinars that we ran on Preparing for your Tournament, Project Q&A and Robot Game Q&A. Links on the Team Resources page

The advancement rate this season will be 25%. Linked in the FAQ document above - question 23 - there is a document linked that has the exact number of advancing slots and which of the 2 NorCal Championship tournaments that teams will advance into from each qualifier tournament.

The 2 NorCal Championship tournament dates and locations are not yet known - stay tuned

Most qualifier tournament directors have sent out at least 1 welcome message through the mylumi Bulletin feature to the Lead Coach 1&2 emails (I know of 2 tournaments that have not as yet - coming soon). Despite our best efforts we know that these emails end up in a spam folder most of the time.

You can see the bulletin messages that have been sent by logging into mylumi and clicking on the Messages link on the left navigation pane.

Please respond back to the Tournament Director confirming that you received their message - their email address should be included. They want to make sure that you are seeing the specific information relative to the tournament that you are attending!

Get Featured! We want to highlight 1 to 3 of your team members on our Playing At Learning social media! Instructions and more info. You can submit more than 1 video. Most importantly - please do not use last names and we would prefer no minors' names are mentioned at all.

Spring League tournaments will be starting to get announced in late November / early December with registration opening shortly after. We are still looking for additional hosts - high level document describing what is involved.

Finally, as we head into the end of year, if you and/or your team parents do any end of year giving or submitting for volunteer hourly matches, please consider Playing At Learning. We are a small local nonprofit that works hard to support the FIRST programs for all of our youth.

As coaches, you see the lightbulb moments every week—the collaboration, the problem-solving, and the sheer joy of competition. Playing At Learning makes those moments possible by keeping the costs manageable, supporting your efforts, and ensuring that the tournaments run smoothly right here in Northern California.

The steep decline in corporate sponsorships has put a significant strain on our ability to maintain the quality and accessibility of our local FLL Challenge events. Your year-end giving is critical to ensuring we don't have to raise registration fees or cut back on the support you and your teams rely on. We appreciate donations of any size. Donate to Playing At Learning