HD5: Filtered Information to Get Your Team Pumped Up

Greetings FIRST LEGO League Oregon,

In this update, you will find:

1. National Registration Open for another ~10 days!
2. Are you ready to apply for your Qualifying Tournament?
3. Oregon Qualifying Tournament Dates
4. What You Need to Know About Qualifying Tournaments
5. Bring in the Bricks - Things to Know About the Challenge Kit
6. The Deep Dark Pit of Email

Use this link to read this update as a blog post

Oregon Update: 5

Welcome to the official FIRST LEGO League Oregon Update. All Oregon FIRST LEGO League Coaches are automatically added to this list weekly! In each update, which you can read in an email or on our blog (cross-posted on both G+ and Facebook), you will find out what is happening in Oregon, the important things from Headquarters in NH, and tips to keep your team on track. This blog will be posted nearly weekly and all posts are archived. All official updates this season will be numbered HD# If you've missed an update, please read the archive to catch up!

1)  National Registration Open for another ~10 days!

Oregon has been granted permission to continue to register teams for the competitive season. If your team is in the process, please get this done as soon as possible! Your team MUST be nationally registered BEFORE you apply to attend an Oregon Qualifying Tournament. Qualifying Tournament Registration opens on October 5 (that's in less than a week!)

To register a team create an account at www.firstinspires.org. All steps were included in last week's update.

Is it too late to get started? No and yes. It is absolutely not too late to finish registration if your coaches have completed the free ORTOP Coach, Mentor, and Parent workshop series and your kids are identified. If you are still working on the finances, finishing a background check, and in the system - you have plenty of time to have a meaningful season, even if you don't have the Challenge Kit yet - I personally know of ~150 teams that are still waiting for their kits. 

If you just heard about FIRST LEGO League last weekend at the Air Show or a Maker Faire and you have no kids identified, are missing a second coach, and havn't started your fundraising - please follow along this year, come to a tournament as volunteers, and be ready, because there will be lots to do very soon so your team will have a great year next year!

If you have more than 10 students on your team, please register a second team so all interested team members can participate! You may NOT have more than 10 team members from this point forward.

2) Are you ready to apply for your Qualifying Tournament?

If you missed last week's checklist I am not going to repeat it here, please go read last week's update.

If your team meets the criteria to be invited to apply for a qualifying tournament (have a LEAD Coach 1 in the FIRST system and a paid National Registration) the Lead Coach 1 will receive an email to the email address in the FIRST system to complete a survey monkey application for EACH FIRST LEGO League team that will be attending a qualifying tournament. This email will arrive on

Wednesday, October 4 at 5:00pm

As the coach, you need to know a lot about your team to complete the application to attend the tournament. Make sure you know:

• Do you know your OFFICIAL 2-5 digit FIRST Team Number? If the number starts 2017 you are NOT ready, please go register!
• Contact information for both coaches
• Names, emails, and employers of Chaperones at the tournament (up to 2)
• EMERGENCY Contact information in case of venue closures - which we hope won't happen this year.
• Know WHO the kids on your team are
• Know what grade they are in
• If they have EVER done FIRST LEGO League before
• If they did FIRST LEGO League Jr
• What their preferred ethnic identity is
• Do they plan to go to FIRST Tech Challenge or FIRST Robotics Competition next year?
• How did they learn about FIRST LEGO League
• What gender do they identify as
• Their names
  (all of this is collected in aggregate it will not be individually linked to the student and it is NEVER shared in an identifiable way - most of it is for ordering, running events, and apply for grants to keep our costs down for all teams)
• Know what your top three tournament choices are
• Know whether day or location is more important
• UNDERSTAND that you may not get your first choice of event, but will be put into an event based on your preferences within a standard 2-hour driving radius from your home location, unless you are Monument, then you have further to go.
• Please be prepared to tell us if your team needs an accommodation that judges or referees should be aware of (again we only share this information with the people who need to know to do their role).
• Be prepared to pay the $200-$100 Qualifying Tournament Application Fee, either by credit card, check, or purchase order. Remember to request and apply your discount if your team needs it. All requests will be matched to a sponsor.

Qualifying Tournament applications are on a roughly first come-first serve basis with some considerations for distance. No more teams will be accepted AFTER October 10 at 9am. Your team will have until the end of October to pay their tournament application fee or they will be dropped from the list of attending teams. Your registration is NOT complete until your application fee has been paid.

The link to apply will also be sent out in an update, but this will not be sent on Wednesday, more likely on Friday.

ORTOP DOES NOT USE THE FIRST SYSTEM TO SELECT TOURNAMENTS - YOU WILL NOT SEE THIS APPEAR ON YOUR DASHBOARD!

Tournament Assignments will be published by Google Sheet by November 3rd on the ORTOP website.

Your team does not need all their consent forms to apply for a tournament, team members only need to be identified at this time.

3) Oregon Qualifying Tournaments

We have 28 potential FIRST LEGO League Qualifying Tournaments planned for Oregon teams this year!  Events will be canceled if there are not enough teams to fill them. A tournament MUST have a minimum of 12 teams and no more than 20 teams.

There are some new events and changes in tournament location you should all be aware of.

We will be having tournaments in Ontario, Medford, Newberg and NE Portland! Welcome to our new locations and tournament directors!  We will NOT have any tournaments at Evergreen Aviation Museum this year, we hope to be back in the museum in the future. 

All tournaments can be found here

Events By Date:

Saturday, December 2

• Grants Pass at North Middle School
• Hillsboro at Intel Jones Farm Conference Center
• Hillsboro at Poynter Middle School
• Hood River at Hood River Middle School
• La Grande at Eastern Oregon University
• Myrtle Creek (Roseburg) at South Umpqua High School
• Newberg at George Fox University (hopefully)
• Portland at Catlin Gabel School
• Salem at Stephens Middle School

Sunday, December 3

• Hillsboro at Intel Jones Farm Conference Center
• Hood River at Hood River Middle School
• Newberg at George Fox University (hopefully)
• Portland at Catlin Gabel School
• Salem at Stephens Middle School

Saturday, December 9

• Corvallis at Oregon State University
• Hillsboro at Hillsboro High School
• Hillsboro at Intel Jones Farm Conference Center
• Medford at Mcloughlin Middle School
• The Dalles at The Dalles Middle School
• Wilsonville at Mentor Graphics 

Sunday, December 10

• Corvallis at Oregon State University
• Hillsboro at Hillsboro High School
• Hillsboro at Intel Jones Farm Conference Center
• The Dalles at The Dalles Middle School
• Wilsonville at Mentor Graphics 

Saturday, December 16

• Ontario at Four Rivers Cultural Center at Treasure Valley Community College - this event will advance to the South Idaho Championship, but is for Oregon teams in Malheur County. You do need to sign up through Oregon!

We are working with Parkrose Middle School to host an event on either December 2 or 9, the final date should be booked before Wednesday. We also are still in the confirming process with George Fox University. 

4) What You Need to Know About Qualifying Tournaments

The Qualifying Tournament is an all-day commitment for the team members. It does not work well if team members are not there the whole time. 

This year all tournaments will have teams check-in from 8-8:30am. Opening Ceremonies will be at 9 am. Competitions will begin at 9:30 am. Your team will be given their own individualized schedule that will have 3 sections. In each section, there will be a robot competition round and a judging session. Your team will compete three times in a 2.5 minute timed match with referees scoring according to the game rules in the challenge guide. Your team will also see three separate judging panels of three judges each, one set for Core Values, one set for the Project, and one set for Robot Design (Don't know what these are, please see this year's Challenge Guide). All team members are required to attend and participate in ALL THREE judging sessions. All events should conclude between 3 and 4:30, this will depend on how many teams are attending your event.

Parents and other spectators do not need to stay the whole time. It can be a long day especially if there are other siblings. Spectators will not be permitted in judging rooms, but are invited to all ceremonies and to watch the robot game in the arena. Spectators are also not permitted in the team area.

Each team needs a minimum of 2 adults to chaperone them, this should be the coaches. A team may also have 1 additional adult for every 3-4 kids for a maximum total of 4 adults for a team of 10 students. If a coach has multiple teams they need to make sure they have enough adults to chaperone all of their teams. Coaches and Chaperones can NOT be watching children who are not a member of the team. Depending on the venue up to two Teen Mentors (over the age of 14) may accompany the team. They can not replace an adult chaperone and coach.

All events are free for the public to attend. The general public is invited to come watch the robot games and ceremonies. Coaches and Chaperones are asked to help with security and report any Gracious Professionalism concerns to a tournament official. These concerns are taken very seriously!

THIS YEAR - Containers with water for Project demonstrations MUST be fully sealed at ALL times, including during the judging session. Open water will not be permitted at any events to keep our venues dry and protect the spaces we are permitted to use. If your team wants to show water moving, flowing, or in an accessible way we suggest finding something to represent water that is not actually wet or a spillable fluid. Teams must also respect all water restrictions in their venue, some gyms do not permit water in any container, including bottled drinking water.

5) Bring in the Bricks - Things to Know About the Challenge Kit

Most teams should have their Challenge kit within the next week or two. Teams may share a challenge kit if they meet in the same building. ALL TEAMS need regular access to THIS YEAR's Challenge Kit.  The Challenge kit is not included in the National Registration fee, you must purchase this kit through LEGO Education, please see last week's update for more details. 

About the Build:

Here are my build times for each of the LEGO bag sets. Your team will probably take slightly longer. Most teams are getting their kits built in 2-3 meetings or around 5 hours for a team of 6. 

• Bag 1 - 21 mins
• Bag 2 - 45 mins (I grabbed the wrong black pieces and had to go back and fix this one!)
• Bag 3 - 27 mins
• Bag 4 - 42 mins
• Bag 5 - 22 mins
• Bag 6 - 14 mins
• Bag 7 - 59 mins (this model has some peculiarities, see below. I also recommend a coach carefully watch or inspect this build).
• Bag 8 - 20 mins
• Bag 9 - 25 mins
• Bag 10 - 34 mins

In all, it took me 5 hours and 9 minutes while distracted to build this year's kit! Can your team beat my time? Post it in the blog comments if you do!

I'm doing WHAT with my Dual Lock!?!

Surprise! We need scissors this year for the dual lock. Please make sure your team follows all the directions in the Field Set-up Guide when setting up their models on the table. You will notice that many of the dual lock squares are small rectangles. We found that you need to cut just over two rows (the long way) of dual lock by hand. Please be as precise as possible, we will be!  It's ok to mumble unflattering comments about the game designers too, we are too ;) 

As if cutting 48 some pieces of dual lock wasn't bad enough, we are also dual locking to the wall again! Please carefully place the dual lock on your model and then use the model to place the pieces to the wall. 

HELP! My Water Treatment and Toilet models aren't working!

You may notice that the sludge cake and big water aren't always ejecting when your robot flushes the toilet. As our gear-heavy model this year, the coaches should absolutely check this build. It turns out because of the gravity water tank and the gears this model is very sensitive to imperfections in the table or being not-quite-level. One way to see if your build is the problem is to remove your model from the table, put it on a known flat surface, like the floor or a level table, and trigger it by rotating the axle one-quarter turn. If the water tank drops and the sludge cake and big water are ejected the model is fine and your problem is with your table. If not, an adult should check for gear binding and if needed rebuild the model.

If the problem is with your table, here are some things you can try. 

• Check for Dual Lock under the model, if the dual lock for the support pieces is under the model this can cause it to not be level.
• Make sure the two side supports are in the right place; if the model isn't flat against the mat it won't work. 
• Make sure your table is on a level surface, check North/South, East/West, and Diagonal. 
• As a last resort, shim it. Some tables have minor imperfections, but are otherwise good tables. If this is the case try putting some of the paper from the dual lock under the front corner where the Big Water ejects, to see if that helps the model work. Make sure you don't block the big water!

We will be watching the functionality of this model at our tournaments and will be doing our best to ensure a consistent experience across all of Oregon. 

6) The Deep Dark Pit of Email

With the final push for registration, locking in some randomly moving and new tournaments my email has become a deep dark pit of lost messages. If you don't hear from me in the normal 48 hours, please do not despair! I may choose to answer your questions using the update, like this one. I may just need more time to get all the information you need. Or, and if this is the case I am most sorry, you may be buried in the pit of email and I haven't seen that you have a time-sensitive issue. I am hoping to be caught up by the end of next week *crossing fingers*  Do not fear, I will do my best to dive in and save those emails, as soon as the phone stops ringing.  

Email is still the most reliable way to reach me. Just make sure the subject and first sentence express the time critical nature of your message if you can't wait a couple days for a reply. Please make sure you include your FIRST team number and school, if applicable, when you have a team-specific question. We are predicting 450 teams will be registered by Wednesday and as much as I love you all, and I do, I don't remember who goes to which team by email address.

Coming Up

Please look for a sample of the Qualifying Tournament Application and link to the Qualifying Tournament Application fee payment options early next week. They should be accompanied by a website update, I hope!

Best Wishes,

Loridee