A huge congratulations to all the teams that participated in FIRST Robotics Competition this season. With all the challenges the world has experienced these last few years, I believe just making it to ‘an’ event was an accomplishment; wins that might be considered “small” in any other season mean so much more this year, and I hope you can celebrate that for yourself and your teammates. For many of you, your official competition season is over. But please, be sure to still take some time to celebrate any and all wins with your team!
For many other teams, the season continues. We’ve got four District/State Championships happening as I am writing this. And, of course, starting less than one week from today (yikes!) FIRST Championship in Houston! It’s going to be a world party, with about ten countries represented in FIRST Robotics Competition alone. Even more exciting – as we haven’t had a FIRST Championship in several decades (feels like it anyway), there’s a chance most people in attendance will never have been to one before. How cool is that?
Speaking of FIRST Championship, initial division assignments are out! These are ‘initial’ assignments because we still have close to 100 teams (yikes again) we need to get to the big dance. If you have already accepted your invitation, the division you see yourself assigned to will be your division at the event – it’s just that more happy teams will be joining you as we finalize the roster. We’ll be releasing final division assignments, along with pit assignments, as soon as we can, though it likely won’t be until Tuesday.
And since we likely won’t be finalizing assignments until Tuesday, that means no preliminary match schedules this season as we have done in the past (sad trombone). Or, if we do preliminary match schedules, they won’t be coming out until very late.
I can’t wait to get to FIRST Championship and put a bow on this season unlike any other!
Frank