If your team would like to participate in the World Championship in Houston this spring, then you should have your coach enter you in the Waitlist Lottery!  More lottery entries for teams that have never been as long as you've competed in at least one Meet or Tournament this year!!  The deadline is December 31 so see here for details:
​http://firsttechchallenge.blogspot.com/2016/11/first-tech-challenge-world-championship.html

Match scores are now listed for each Meet site:

http://www.sdftc.org/scores-and-rankings.html

1. Parking on the Center Vortex Base or the Corner Vortex Ramp ONLY scores points during Autonomous, so don't bother parking in Endgame.

​2. Penalties are being called for hitting the Beacons and perimeter walls too hard. "Too hard" is somewhat subjective, but the referees' call is final so consider modifying your button pushing mechanism and/or implementing a drive-slow  mode for activating the Beacons.

​3. Lifting the Cap Ball before Endgame will prevent your team from scoring the Cap Ball at all - see <GS15>.

​Anyone have any other tips to share?  Please comment!

This scholarship for students pursuing degrees in Biomedical Engineering & Pre-Med is open for applications. Deadline is February 1, 2017.
http://www.firstinspires.org/bart-kamen-scholarship

Voting is now open for Bracket 1 and 2 of the FIRST Song Parodies.

​Dragons 5229 have their songs in Bracket 2 - take a listen and vote:
http://www.firstinspires.org/first-song-parody

Ranking summaries from each League Meet from December 10 are now posted.
www.sdftc.org/scores-and-rankings.html
As we get more data, we may change how we display and summarize the data to make it more useful. If anyone has suggestions on what or how they'd like to see the data, please leave us comments or email us.

The new FTC West website has just had its first update for the season - check it out! More details about the March 10-12 Super-Regional Championship event should be available soon.

http://ftcwest.org
​

Dean’s List Interviewers – We are still looking for volunteers to be interviewers for the Dean’s List in the San Diego region.  We still need the following volunteers:  3 for Gauss, 2 for Descartes, 3 for Euclid and 1 for Turing.  No experience is required!

1. This is a great way to get parents or community members involved in the Region and for them to hear the amazing things our kids are doings.
2. Volunteers can interview at the same site their team is competing, we just won’t have them interview one of their own team members.
3. The Commitment is small: (i) complete a short online training, (ii) interview students on Feb 4 or 5, (iii) enter your interview notes in the system.

​If interested, please contact:
John & Marion Brooks
FIRST Tech Challenge Affiliate Partners, San Diego
ftcsandiego@att.net
​