NorCal FTC Updates for 9/26
Mark Edelman
All,
a few updates for everyone!
- PG&E/Dream Maker Fund back as a NorCal FTC Sponsor
- Updates on Tournament Locations and Dates
- 2025-2026 Season Costs
- AB506 Status
- Qualifying Tournament Registration
PG&E/Dream Maker Fund back as a NorCal FTC Sponsor
We are excited to share that PG&E and the Dream Maker Fund are back as sponsors for NorCal FTC for the 2025-2026 DECODE season. There will be team grants available. Information on the grant requirements and a link to the grant application form should be available soon (next week??).
The application deadline will likely be by the end of October - so if you are planning to apply, make sure to apply early!
Updates on Tournament Locations and Dates
A big thank you to all the tournament hosts that are working with us to confirm locations and dates. We are actively adding the tournaments into the schedule on the NorCal FTC website (https://www.norcalftc.org/2024-25-norcal-ftc-qualifying-tournaments/)
We are currently focused primarily on the November dates to allow us to get the November event registration started.
Additional Dec/Jan/Feb events will be added as we get them finalized.
2025-2026 Season Costs
We are sorry to share that we unfortunately need to increase our event registration fees for the coming season! There are three primary factors that drove the need; increased venue costs, increased game set costs and increased awards costs.
Your event registration fees break down to cover hosting costs, awards costs, field element costs and program support.
We have heard from our tournament hosts that their costs have gone up - custodial fees at their schools, the costs of food/drink for the volunteers and more have all gone up!
FTC made a decision to change award vendors this year and has mandated that we MUST use the new trophies. The costs for the awards increased approximately 300%!!!
If you ordered a field set this year, you likely are already aware that the costs of the field elements (including shipping) went up by approximately 50% this year.
Factoring in all of the above, the costs for participation for the 2025-2026 season will be:
| Competition Type | Fee |
| League | $350 |
| 1st Qualifier | $275 |
| 2nd Qualifier | $300 |
| 3rd Qualifier | $350 |
| Regional Championship | TBD |
We understand that this is a significant (and potentially unexpected) increase, however, the increase is needed to allow the events to continue without an undue financial burden on our wonderful tournament hosts.
If your team is facing hardship due to the increases, we are exploring being able to provide a partial hardship grant/fee waiver for a few teams. Stay tuned for more information.
AB506 Status
Hopefully, everyone has been paying attention to the repeated messaging around the California AB506 lead coach requirements for the season. As a reminder, both lead coach 1 and lead coach 2 must complete mandated reporter training/certification and pass a LiveScan fingerprinting/background check. More info can be found at: https://www.playingatlearning.org/ca-ab506/
We are currently working through adding checks into our registration system that will limit teams that have not met the requirements from being able to register for events.
We have only had access to the coach status reports from FIRST for approximately a week and integration and testing is on going. We will make additional announcements as the system updates are finalized!
In the mean time, if you are lead coach 1 or lead coach 2 for a team, it is in your team's best interest to go through the training and fingerprinting as soon as possible!
Qualifying Tournament Registration
As we finalize the list of qualifying tournaments, we are also actively preparing for the opening of qualifying tournament registration.
A couple of seasons ago we put together a short "guide" to how qualifying registration works . You can see a recording of the session at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNXVr7IY_i8
We will be updating the presentation and scheduling a webinar to allow for questions/answers! Watch for an announcement with a date and time!
A Final Note
We are busy thru the weekend supporting FIRST outreach efforts at the Bay Area Maker's Faire. We are back to the offices again Monday morning!!!
That's enough for today!!!
Stay tuned!
Mark & Devin
-- Playing At Learning Northern California Partner for FIRST LEGO League Jr, FIRST LEGO League and FIRST Tech Challenge ma...@playingatlearning.org (844)752-9576 x700