Top Questions about Tournament Registration – updated Sept 15, 2013
| 1) |
Q: How come I don’t see any tournaments listed when I login? A: You are most likely looking at the wrong place. NorCal does NOT use the FIRST Event system to manage tournament registration so our events do not show up on the usfirst.org site anywhere. There are 3 prerequisites to complete BEFORE you can register. Explanation of the overall registration process.
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| 2) | Q: What do I need to do to register for a tournament? A: Before you can register, your team must complete the prerequisites. |
| 3) | Q: I coach multiple (as in 3 or more) teams, how can I insure that they all compete at the same event? A: Email fll at playingatlearning dot org outlining the reason(s) you need special treatment. We try to be compassionate within limits. Note that FIRST has newly published participation rules and every team must have at least 1 unique “supervising adult” identified for each team – so if you are the coach for 3 teams, you must identify 2 other adults that will be attending and have submitted their waiver form. |
| 4) |
Q: I don’t understand paying for a tournament without knowing which one the team is attending? A: This is a change that we did starting in the 2010 year. In previous years, we have had teams delay paying or even not pay at all while we have held a tournament spot open for their team. Since all tournaments charge the same amount, you pay to enable your registration. The tournaments in good faith set a “break even” budget and even one team’s nonpayment causes hardship. Also, it helps us to make sure that we know how much tournament space that we must “create” – each year a varying number of team (usually between 2% to more than 10%) decide not to compete – the earlier we know this will help us to “rightsize” the number of tournaments and their size. |
| 5) | Q: How do I register for multiple tournaments? A: Short answer is you don’t. We have only sufficient tournament capacity to give all teams exactly one tournament slot at each level. |
| 6) | Q: Which adults working with the team need to have signed waivers sent to Playing At Learning? A: Besides all team members, anyone else that is acting in the position of mentor, team coordinator or coach/co-coach at a tournament must have a signed waiver received by Playing At Learning. Please do not scan and fax/email these. And please do use the current year’s form. |
| 7) | Q: How do I register to attend the <insert name / location> A: You need to wait until early October when the tournament registration goes live for those that have completed their prerequisites. We do a first come, first served registration policy. |
| 8) | Q: How many competitions does the team need to win to advance between levels? A: That is not the way the tournament advancement works. Please review the Advancement Policy (and all policies that align with FIRST requirements) so that you can understand that only well rounded teams that are strong in all required areas (Core Values, Project, Robot Design and above the Robot Performance limit) will advance between levels. The FLL Judging FAQ addresses this |
| 9) | Q: I don’t see the tournament registration link – where is it?
A: It will be a Box that shows up on the front page on the right column – above the challenge logo on ~10/7. Please be patient. |
| 10) | Q: How many teams will advance from my qualifier?
A: The short answer is we don’t know yet since we don’t know how many teams will be competing this year. Once registration closes AND we get all teams into a tournament, we will figure out the percentage of teams that will advance. All tournaments of the same size will advance exactly the same number of teams. It has happened that there is sometimes a bit of rounding up or down by 1 to make sure that all slots can be filled. |