Almost 50 teams at Kickoff for "Velocity Vortex"

The San Diego region kicked off the 2016-2017 FTC season yesterday Sep 10 at the Fleet Science Center with almost 50 teams in attendance including about 9 rookie teams! Colin Nilsen, Captain of Rise of Hephaestus (FTC4216), was the Master of Ceremonies introducing the speakers. Dr. Steven Snyder, CEO of the Fleet Science Center, led the morning by saying how happy he was to host FTC and speaking of the Fleet's mission to reach out to the community and connect with scientists and engineers wherever they live, work, and play. Our next speaker was Charles Bergan, VP of Engineering, Qualcomm Corporate R&D, and he spoke about how the Qualcomm engineers design and build drones that could double crop yields worldwide in a scalable manner. This allows their employees to "save the world" and make a very good living at the same time -- similar futures await hard-working FTC graduates.

John Brooks, San Diego FTC Affiliate Partner, then got up to describe the new League structure in San Diego. We will have 5 leagues, each with 12-16 teams. Teams will compete in their league's Meet #1, then be mixed with teams from other leagues in  Meet #2 and Meet #3, playing 6 matches at each meet with no judging. Then each league will have a League Tournament with judging  among just the teams in their league. Each team will carry forward their 10 best match scores (QP and RP) into the League Tournament. Top winners at each League Tournament will advance to the San Diego Regional Championship. Team coaches should have received this information by email. See the Calendar for dates of the Meets, Tournaments, and Championship. 

 John then brought up Isabelle Ho, Captain of RoBowties (FTC6137), to introduce the new San Diego region FTC website sdftc.org, and she asked everyone for suggestions and feedback. After the game reveal for "Velocity Vortex" and teams viewing the actual field components, Rob Colatutto, coach of Green.Griffins (FTC10092), reviewed the game rules and handled Q&A. Also, John Brooks passed out a "swag bag" to each team (containing a red and blue whiffle ball, a large cap ball, and a pump to inflate it) so if your team didn't receive one, contact John.

​Finally, we need a set of 5 names for our 5 leagues - again, send your suggestions to John Brooks.

​Good luck to all teams!