FIRST AGE  Join our archaeology-inspired robotics season

National Team registration via firstinspires.org is open now

During the DECODE℠ season, FIRST Tech Challenge teams will explore the past, discover artifacts, trace stories and use them to develop ideas for the future.

Details for the DECODE season will be available Saturday September 6, 2025 at 9am pacific time

Learn more about California Youth Protection (AB506) screening requirements for coaches/mentors and most event volunteers 

Join NorCal FTC googlegroup to be informed about all local news including important dates and deadlines!
[and make sure to update your Membership settings to receive email – default is no email]

In this note:

Team Workshops
Team Registration
Qualifier Hosts
Town Hall – Qualifier Registration
Pilot Leagues
Volunteer Recruitment
Game Documentation
Science Day in the Park

Team Workshops

We have teams in Northern California that have put together helpful information for teams. They have recorded workshops to be reviewed when you need the information. There’s also a link at the bottom of the page to prior year’s workshops. If you have content that you’d like to share this year, please send an email to ftc@playingatlearning.org. You can find the link on our website under “Items of Interest” at the top of the page. Or here. Thank you to the teams that have taken the time to share their skills!!!

Team Registration

Every year, one of our greatest mysteries is how many teams we’re trying to serve. If your team is planning to compete this year and you haven’t yet registered, PLEASE DO!! The number of teams we have for the season affects nearly everything we do up to and including the size of our championship at the end of the year. Right now we are trying to figure out how many events we need to facilitate to give everyone the chances to play that they want. Please register!

Qualifier Hosts

In NorCal, prior to the pandemic, we targeted an average of 2.5 plays per team, and many of our teams got three plays. However, with our team growth and our loss of host sites, we’re not going to make that this year. In order to offer an average of nearly 2 plays per team, we need an additional 6 (SIX), hosts. If you are willing to host and have a venue, please contact us ASAP. If you have a venue but don’t want to host, or if you can host but don’t have a venue, please contact us. Send an email to ftc@playingatlearning.org. There’s a guide to hosting events on our website here. We are trying to finalize the season calendar by early October and that’s right around the corner!

Town Hall – Qualifier Registration

We are planning to host a Town Hall Meeting on Monday, Oct 10th at 7:00pm to discuss our new registration process. If your team is competing in qualifiers this season, you should plan to have at least one coach/parent/team lead attend this meeting. You may have as many as you want to join, but please send at least one person.

For rookie teams – all of the competitions are registered locally through us, not through FIRST or through your FIRST Dashboard. This meeting will discuss the process we will use to register to compete.

Register here to attend: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8246714766781457935

Pilot Leagues

We still have a few spaces in each of our pilot leagues. If your team is interested in competing in a league, please complete this team survey. We’ll go in a first come first served order and will send an invitation based on the survey. The invitation form will need to be returned quickly to secure a spot.

Quick league overview – we are piloting two stand alone leagues of 16 teams (Peninsula and Sacramento/East/North areas) and one metro league of apx 28 teams in the “South Bay” area. Each league will run meets in Nov, Dec, and Jan with a League Tournament in late Jan early Feb. A meet is like a scrimmage with inspections then randomized qualifier matches (5-6). There’s no judging during a meet. The League Tournament is just like a qualifier except each team brings in up to 10 match results from their best meet scores to seed the League Tournament team rankings. League teams will only compete within their league and cannot participate in qualifiers.

Volunteer Recruitment

We need your help to recruit volunteers to support our events! We particularly need your help recruiting unaffiliated judges – these are people who don’t have a close friend or family member currently on an FTC team. Good candidates are people who like talking with students like retired teachers, scout leaders, and parents (especially FIRST alumni parents). We also need non-technical judges so volunteers don’t need to be technical.

What can you do? Recruit! We will be hosting information sessions on Oct 6th, Oct 12th and Oct 24th all at 7:00pm. No commitment – just come hear about the jobs and signup process. For teams competing in Leagues, each team will need to supply at least one volunteer, preferably an inspector or referee. To get the zoom link to join us, please send an email (or have your recruited people send an email) to volunteer@playingatlearning.org or complete the form below.

Form to get more information about volunteering: https://forms.gle/QbJpRXQDY7GszCSHA

Science in the Park

Playing at Learning is planning to have a booth at the Science in the Park event on Oct 1st from 9:00am to 3:00pm at CSU East Bay 25800 Carlos Bee Blvd, Hayward.

If you’re a veteran team who is interested in providing a demonstration and talking with people for the day or part of the day, please send an email to ftc@playingatlearning.org. Please let me know if there’s a time slot you prefer. Each team will need to have at least two adult chaperones.

I hope your teams are off to a good start! As usual, let us know if you have questions.

Dianne & Mark

Hi Teams and Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone had a nice break away from your computers – I’m sure it was needed.

There is a lot of very important information about how we are going forward in this note and it’s important that you read it all. We are assuming that by sending this note, everyone has been notified so please share it within your team(s).

Here’s what’s in this note:

Event cancellation and policies
Event Registration
Dean’s List Nominations and Interview only event

Event Cancellations and policies

Most of NorCal is still under Stay at Home orders and although they are scheduled to expire this week, we expect them to be extended. It’s a very dynamic situation and it’s hard to make plans with things in such flux. “Pivot” has been a favored word and it will likely still apply to the rest of our season. After some discussion, here’s the plan we will work under going forward into the rest of our season.

Each event on our calendar will be evaluated as a go/no go no later than the Wednesday prior to the opening of play. (For example, for the Santa Clara event scheduled on 1/16, play would open on 1/10 so on Wednesday, 1/6, we will decide if the event will go on or if it will be cancelled.) Events may cancel for two reasons. The minimum number of teams registered must be at least 12 or it will be cancelled. Also, if there is a Stay at Home order or Shelter in Place order for the majority of our teams or area, the event may be cancelled. We don’t want to encourage any teams to break mandates just to compete.

In the case of a cancellation, we will email the contact that registered for the event as well as Lead Coach 1 & 2 when the decision is made. The play that was cancelled for each team will be reset and they will immediately be able to register for any open slot in any other event that’s eligible for registration. We will “hold” payments for events in hopes that you are able to compete at a different time. Full refunds will be issued as needed.

If an individual team cancels out of an event or changes from one event into another event, our change and cancellation policies will still be in force. (Available on our website.) We will likely open a waitlist for events later in the season as we anticipate later events being full. As needed, we’ll publish those reminders later.

Unfortunately, our schedule is fairly full and we don’t anticipate being able to reschedule any cancelled events. Teams in a cancelled event should plan to register for openings in other events.

I’d like to add a note here to our tournament directors. We appreciate all the support from these teams and mentors/coaches!! While a Remote Event is easier to host than an in person event, it’s certainly more challenging during a pandemic when your efforts may all get wiped out at the last minute. We sincerely thank you for your efforts to keep NorCal open and your patience as we work through this season.

Event Registration

February event registration opens on Thursday (Jan 7th) at 7:00pm. The first round (opening on the 7th) is for teams who haven’t yet registered for an event (1st play). 2nd play registration opens on Monday, Jan 11th. You can check your team’s eligibility for registration from your team’s status page which can be found from the Team List. The link for registration is also found on that same status page for all eligible teams. If you have questions about your eligibility, please let me know.

Reminder that registration will be closing 10-11 days before the event date – roughly about the same time as our “go/no-go” decision. This is needed to allow time for team communication with submitted documents and the week-long play period before the judging.

Dean’s List Nominations and Interview only event

As we have for the past several years, we will be hosting a Dean’s List Interview Only Event on Sunday, April 11th. This means that nominations are due by March 15th, 2021. Please don’t wait until the last minute – allow time for technical difficulties! Nominations are made through the Dashboard from Lead Coach 1 and 2. Here’s the link to information about the Dean’s List award and the nomination guide. PLEASE be sure to look at the criteria for the award and nominate students accordingly. Be sure to answer the questions answered!

As always, let me know if you have questions. Stay safe!

Dianne & Mark

In this email:
Remote Judging Platform including “Primary Adult”
Virtual Sharing and “Pit Visits”
Team Submissions
Judging Session Scheduling
Ask An Expert – Inspection – Nov 18th
Team Member Registration
FTC Scoring System
Registration for Later Events
Qualifier Status

Remote Judging Platform

Well, we’ve finally made our decision and we’re planning to use Zoom for the judging portion of our Remote Events. We are planning to set up each team in their own Zoom session (provided by us) hosted by one of your coaches and the judges will come into your session for judging. (See below topic on judging) We are planning to have “practice” sessions set up for teams/coaches that aren’t familiar with the platform. More on training later. Each Zoom session will be required to have a minimum of 2 adults per YPP guidelines and at least one of them needs to be Lead Coach 1 or 2. This Lead Coach will be assigned to be the host of the Zoom session. When submitting your team’s information for the Remote Event, this person will be submitted in the “Primary Adult” position. We will email all necessary Zoom information to the Primary adult and the additional adult identified by the team and they may share the information with their team members. Please do not share this information outside your team as you don’t want outside individuals in your team room during judging.

The award ceremony will be on a GoToWebinar Platform at the end of the day.

Virtual Sharing and “Pit Visits”

We are planning to post a chart of teams competing at an event with an optional space for them to post a link to content they would like to share with the public. This could be a link to a shared slide file or a video. It could be a video of their robot reveal or a presentation about the team. It could also be a link to a playlist of their qualifying matches for that event. This is optional but we’ve had many teams that are interested in having a place to share these types of things.

In our day’s schedule, the teams will have a morning judging session and a 2nd visit from judges (Pit Interviews) after lunch. In the afternoon after the judging, we will be emailing out information to teams that Opt In to hosting “Pit Visits”. This means we will share your Zoom credentials with other teams so that you can visit each other in your pit rooms.

We’re going to try these two optional activities for all of our December events and see how they go and how much participation we get. We’ll then decide whether or not to continue them into the rest of the season.

Team Submissions

Teams will get a link to a JotForm to submit all information needed for their event. This will include basic team and contact information including an address where any trophies should be mailed and the chance to upload a team picture that may be used during the award ceremony.

Then there will be a place to upload your Engineering Portfolio. This will be an upload in .pdf form rather than a link to your content. The Engineering Portfolio is required for any judged awards. There are also optional uploads for the Control Award Submission form (and a link to a required video), a Judging Team Feedback Form and a link to your Engineering Notebook should the judges want to look at it.  (If you’re interested in receiving feedback, here’s a link to the form.)

The last section asks teams if they want to Opt In for Pit Visits and if they have something they would like to share virtually with the public with a chance to provide the link to the content and a short description of it.

It’s important that teams provide this information in a timely manner as we will need time to verify receipt and make it available to the intended users. We are requesting all Jotform materials will need to be submitted no later than Wed evening (8pm) the week before your judging session. Note, this will be during the week of your qualifying matches.

Judging Session Scheduling

Teams will have two sessions with judges on the day of the event. They will have a morning scheduled session that’s similar to the morning judge sessions at a traditional event. They will have 5 minutes to present to the judges followed by roughly 5 min of Q&A. After lunch, each team will have another Pit Interview session. For these interviews teams will asked to be in their team’s Zoom session room during a window when the judges will be coming around. Specific times for these windows will be out later but we anticipate it will be somewhere in the 1:30-4:00 window and we’ll let you know more as it’s more defined.

Ask An Expert: Inspections – Nov 18th at 7:00p

We will be hosting our next Ask An Expert session with a presentation and general Q&A for Inspection. Bob France, a lead NorCal FTA and Lead Inspector will be going over all the requirements for self-inspecting your robot to be sure you’re compliant and competition ready. Just in time for the December events!!  Register here to attend on Wed, Nov 18th at 7:00pm.

Team Member Registration – Important!

A reminder that all team members will need to register online this year and electronically sign the consent and release form. Note, the Consent and Release form was updated on Sept 9th with notes about Covid-19 so any team members or coaches who had signed prior to that date will need to go back in and sign the updated version. For help and instructions on completing this process, there’s a section in the Resource Library to help including instructions for using a mobile device. Look here for instructions.

All team members should be registered online even if your not planning to compete. You’ll need to have all youth registered including the Consent forms for youth and adults. You will not be submitting a printed (or .pdf) roster for competitions however. We will be checking these on the FIRST system. Teams will not be allowed to log into the FTC Scoring System until this is complete. Please help us in this HUGE effort of verifying all teams by taking care of this now! Once this is done for the season, you won’t need to touch it again unless you make changes to your teams.

FTC Scoring System

FIRST has provided several videos to help teams prepare for their remote qualifying matches using the FTC Scoring System. Here’s a link to the Game and Season page. Look under “Remote Team Resources” for links to the videos and FTC Scoring Manual. The link to Remote Scoresheets are at the bottom in the “Season Results” section.The FTC Scoring system should be released soon.

Once we confirm a team has completed their teams’ registrations, we will register teams into their events in the FTC Scoring System. Then either Lead Coach 1 or Lead Coach 2 can access the scoring system either through a link (ftc-scoring.firstinspires.org) or (we think) through a link in their FIRST Dashboard.

Teams will have from 7:00am on the first day of their event through 2:00pm on their judging day to submit their qualifying match scores. These will either be live with an internet connection or entered later with from a paper scoresheet (if no internet at the field). It’s important for teams to carefully review the score from a match before hitting the submit button because once it’s committed, it’s final. We also recommend that teams plan to complete their matches early. You will want to allow time to fix any problems or difficulties prior to the end of the window. Absolutely no late scores will be accepted. If you wait until the last minute and run out of time, any unplayed matches will have a zero score.

At the end of the event, all scores from that event will be made public on the FIRST website.

Registration for Later Events

Check the norcalftc.org website at the bottom on the tab labeled “NorCal FTC Event Registration”. This is where you’ll find the schedule for when the windows to register for all our events. The actual registration link you use during the applicable window is from your team’s status page from the Team List.

Qualifier Status

If you look on our website at the “Qualifier Status” link at the bottom, you’ll see how many teams are registered for each event. If you click on the link for the name of each event, it will show you the list of teams that have registered for that event.

There’s a lot to unpack in this message. Please let us know if you have questions. Teams registered for events will be emailed from their tournament director with specific dates and instructions for submitting their team’s materials prior to their event.

Good luck and stay safe!

Hi Teams –

There’s a lot of important stuff in this email, especially if your team wants to compete in Nov or Dec. Please read carefully.

In this email:
Town Hall Recap and Q&A
Registration Eligibility, Process and Costs
Event Dates
Video Tags and Fair Play
Innovation Challenge for FTC
FTC Teams for FLL events – Ask Me Anything
Team Blasts – Team Help SessionsTown Hall Recap and Q&A
Here’s the link to the Town Hall archive page. There you can find the link to the slides and the video recording of last week’s Town Hall meeting. The questions from last week’s meeting have been entered into the Q&A page.

Registration, Eligibility, Process and Costs

In order to be eligible to compete in NorCal, you must have three things completed. 1) Paid your $275 registration fee to FIRST. 2) Have two screened coaches. 3) Complete a NorCal Survey about your team. You can check your team’s status from your status page link on the Team List next to your team number. The center section shows “Eligibility”. If it says “Yes, 2, Done” then you will be able to register. If it only shows 1 for screened coaches, you’ll need to verify that both Lead Coach 1 and Lead Coach 2 have been screened. These individuals can check from their FIRST Dashboard and can access the YPP screening from the drop down menu under the name in the upper right hand corner. If the survey isn’t complete, there will be a link to the survey. NOTE, both screening and payment to FIRST may take a few days to process to if you want to register for a Nov/Dec event, please take care of this quickly!!

Registration for Nov/Dec events will open at 7:00pm on Oct 22nd. Any eligible team will have a link to be able to register from their team’s status page next to QT #1. You will use this link to actually register. In the window from Oct 22nd through Thursday, Nov 5th, teams may register for any open spots in any of the Nov/Dec events as their first play. Starting on Thursday, 11/5 at 7:00pm, teams will be allowed to register for a 2nd play in Nov/Dec. The full registration process and schedule of what events can be registered for when is on the Registration page here. Note that once you’ve completed the registration page, you will be registered. You won’t get a further confirmation. Likewise, you are then obligated to pay for that event.

Costs for Remote events will be less than in-person events. The 1st play will be $100, 2nd play is $125, and 3rd play is $150. There will be a link to pay for the event after you register or you will be able to access it from the status page. When you make your payment, you will not receive a further receipt. IF YOU NEED A RECEIPT, please print that page immediately.

Event Dates
In a Remote Event, teams will have 6-7 days to play and record their qualifying matches for that event. Then there will be a day for judging that ends in an award ceremony. The dates listed on our schedule page are the dates of the Judging Event day. The matches will be played in the week prior to that date. We are clarifying the exact criteria with HQ and will update our schedule page to give the exact dates of allowed match play. For now, please be aware if you sign up for an event on Nov 22nd for example, your robot will need to be ready to play the week before.Video Tags and Fair Play
In order to encourage transparency, we encourage teams to post videos of their robot and their qualifying matches online. As a way for others to then find your videos, we encourage you to use tags to identify them. Our proposal for a tagging convention is on this page.

Along with these videos, teams are encouraged to sign a Fair Play for FTC Pledge. You can read all about it here. Kudos to teams 4345, 6949, 7303, 8381, 8404, 9656, 9784, 11039, 11575, 11689, 12635, 12869, 14341, 14504, 16306, 16532, 16533, 16944, 17759, 18219, 18223, 18254, 18272, 18373, 18340, 18466, and 18513 for already making this pledge!!! As teams make this pledge, they will receive stickers to proudly display their participation and will be listed here. This Fair Play for FTC is spreading throughout the entire FIRST community and we look forward to also displaying teams from around the world.

Innovation Challenge for FTC
Last week, FIRST announced a new challenge in which FTC teams can participate. Teams will have an opportunity to identify a real-world problem or opportunity related to our season theme and design a solution, build a business model, and deliver a remote pitch to compete for advancement. More details will be out in mid December when this officially kicks off. Read more about it here.FTC Teams for FLL events – Ask Me Anything
Like FTC, our FLL Challenge competitions will also be going virtual. These FLL Challenge events will be in December and January and are looking for an FTC team for each event to “come” and give FLLC teams a chance to be introduced to FTC. During the allotted time of 30-60 minutes, the FTC team can make a short presentation and have time for students to “Ask Me Anything” about FTC. Interested teams are asked to contact dianne@playingatlearning.org with your preference for weekends in Dec and Jan.
Team Email Blasts – Team Help Sessions
FIRST sends out FTC Team Email Blasts on Thursdays and this week’s blast included lots of good opportunities for teams to participate in webinars for the FTC Scoring system as well as other Remote Team Resources. There are also webinars scheduled to address Troubleshooting (10/21), Judging, Scoring and Gameplay. Here’s a link to the archive of Team Blasts. The emails come from the address firsttechchallenge@firstinspires.org. If you haven’t seen them, check your spam folder. There’s also a link from the archive page to sign up to receive the emails. Don’t miss out on these helpful resources!

Whew! Thanks for reading through this to the end!

As always, let us know if you have questions –

Dianne and Mark