We will NOT be using FIRST’s Event Registration system, so none of our specific tournaments will be searchable on the usfirst.org site !
If your team is not planning on competing at a Nor Cal tournament for the 2011 Food Factor season, please send an email to jillw@playingatlearning.org so that a space is not held open for your team. Your timely notification will also save the registration team time and effort.
There are three tournament registration phases for our region:
Pre-Reqs : Now to Oct 1 3 – Check Team Status
We will mark your team as “Eligible” to register for a qualifier once the two prerequisites (payment and all waivers including coach/mentor and cover sheet) are complete. IMPORTANT: If you are the primary coach for 3 or more teams and all of your teams must compete at the exact same tournament due to school field trip logistics or similar requirements, please contact me at jillw@playingatlearning.org no later than October 1st 3rd, as we will be handling “large school groups” as a special case registration situation.
PHASE 1: First-Come-First-Served Registration : Oct 5 7pm Pacific Time to Oct 10
Teams whose payment and waivers have been received by Playing at Learning by 10/1 10/3 will be able to register for a qualifying tournament – first come, first served. For best results, you should have a prioritized list of tournaments as well as any dates that your team can’t make when you begin this online registration process as we expect that some tournaments will fill rapidly. See a bit more detail below on what the process will likely “look” like.
PHASE 2: “Rolling” Open Registration: Oct 12 Oct 10 7pm Pacific to Oct 19
Teams whose payment and waivers were not been received by Playing at Learning ahead of the earlier deadline will be able to register for a qualifying tournament in this phase 2. Teams can register into any tournament that has open slots during the “rolling” open registration once we have both of the pre-registration requirements met (all of your forms and payment). The team will be enabled as soon as both items are completed after this phase opens.
Where are the tournaments in my district?
The list of tournament sites is here. We will be placing each qualifier into 1 of 4 districts based on geography. We hope to have the rest of the tournament sites confirmed just as soon as possible. If you can help find additional locations, please let us know.
How will this work ?
First Phase Tournament Registration will open today at 7pm pacific and will close on 10/10. Second Phase Tournament Registration will likely open on 10/10 at 7pm pacific and stay open until all teams are taken care of.
All teams should check their team status online which will identify if the team is eligible to register in this first phase Check Team Status
We have tried to make a very simple interface and registration system – IT IS BASED ON YOUR TEAM NUMBER. The following email will describe how this tournament registration will work for the eligible teams. IMPORTANT: There is no provision for making edits to a specific team after you hit Submit, so please be careful and choose wisely.
1) We recommend that the team determine their priority of attending the confirmed tournaments. A team may attend exactly one qualifier. Note that new tournaments are still getting confirmed (and will show up after they are confirmed) – we have been working very hard to get these all confirmed but we are not quite there. We believe we have adequate space and we have a plan for making sure that all teams that want to compete have a tournament slot.
2) If your team is marked as eligible, the primary coach (if possible) but can be a co-coach or other designated team adult, should visit the norcalfll.org site after 10/5 7pm pacific (tonight) to register for a qualifying tournament in their district. A “clickable” yellow box icon with the words, “Register for Qualifier” will show up on the norcalfll.org site on the top right (next to the blue qualifier payment box). This will do a “redirect” to our playingatlearning.org website to a URL in that domain.
3) You enter your team number and then enter. This will look up your eligibility status and district.
4) It is important that you enable popups on the site as that is how any error messages will get relayed.
5) The top of registration page will be the current open capacity status of each of the tournaments in your district at the exact time that the page was loaded.
6) The coach (or designated person) will scroll to the bottom of the form and fill out the requested information and also confirm that they agree to the Coaches Promise AND the published policies.
7) If you want to review the Coaches Promise ahead of time, it is in the Coaches Handbook that each team received and also replicated here (there are a few, very minor, differences with this PDF as compared to the 2011 Coaches Handbook): http://www.playingatlearning.org/NorCalFLL/docs/CoachesPromise.pdf
8) If you want to review the NorCal FLL policies ahead of time, they are published here: https://www.norcalfll.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=60&Itemid=77
9) The coach must pick up to 3 choices that the team can attend (unless there are less than 3 with open slots which we don’t think will happen in this first phase) and click, “Submit Form”.
10) The reg system will try to give the team their highest rated tournament automatically (based on the time that the submit form was clicked, not when the page was last loaded) and then will report back which tournament that the team was giving (please PRINT your confirmation page) OR to let you know that all 3 were full and that the coach must select again. There is no email or other notification outside of the confirmation page given by the system. PRINT THE CONFIRMATION PAGE!
IMPORTANT: There is no provision for going in and making edits to a specific team after you hit Submit , so please be careful and choose wisely. Also there is no way to bundle multiple teams – you will have to register each team separately.
If the team is not yet eligible to register, don’t panic! We believe that there will be adequate tournament space for all teams. Please get your team/coach/mentor waivers mailed and your payment. The next opportunity will be after 10/10 and only after both steps are completed for your team. This next phase is currently expected to open by 10/12 but we may be able to open this a bit earlier if all goes smoothly during this first reg phase.
If you make a mistake or need a change, we will handle that after 10/10 as we can. There are no promises that we can accommodate your request.
Finally, If your team is not planning on competing this year, please just let us know so that we don’t start trying to contact you directly. I do email and call repeatedly until I hear a definite yes or no answer from the coach.
2010 Picture of Registration Page – Note that this is just a static “snapshot” picture of the 2010 Tournament Registration page. We may make a few modifications but hopefully this will help you get the general idea
You will directly register your team into a specific tournament. [The picture linked above only has 1 choice listed but really you will need to be ready to submit 3 choices] You will have immediate feedback on exactly which tournament choice was successful – PRINT THE CONFIRMATION PAGE!
If a hiccup happens or similar with our database, that is the only proof that you have that you successfully registered the team! We ask for 3 choices to help with managing race conditions – it has occurred that in the time between you loading the page and hitting the that a different team took the “last spot” and then you would be automatically given your 2nd choice (or 3rd if needed).
After you have registered your team into a tournament, changes to registrations really can’t be accepted – it will mean finding a team willing to trade with you. The Community site group, “Tournament Trades” exists for coaches to requests trades.
Please communicate with your team, plan ahead, and observe the various dates above. This schedule was put into place in order to best serve the needs of our entire NorCal FLL community and to ensure that all teams have an opportunity to compete. It will work most smoothly if everyone participates in a thoughtful and considerate manner.
Thank you ahead of time for your gracious professionalism!