January 8/9 and January 15/16 Qualifier Reschedule Dates/Remote Event Statement/REV Grounding Straps Update

I am writing to let you know we have secured reschedule dates for the January 8/9 and January 15/16 events.  If you had a secured spot in one of these events you have been moved over to the reschedule date.

The new dates are as follows for events taking place at their original location:

• Andover High School/RoboStorm 6.1 – Original Date January 8 – Reschedule Date February 12
• Andover High School/RoboStorm 6.2 – Original Date January 9 – Reschedule Date February 13
• Canton High School/ WHO LET THE BOTS OUT – Original Date January 15 – Reschedule Date February 19

Unfortunately,  Natick High School was unable to re-book the event for February 20th, but in the spirit of Coopertition and Gracious Professionalism, Canton High School has offered to hold the rescheduled event at their location. We want to extend our sincerest thanks to Canton High School for providing their school as well as to FTC0001 Team Unlimited who has agreed to Host the event.

We also want to send our deepest thanks to Natick High School* for having been willing to hold a Qualifier this season. We know the situation is a disappointment for Natick’s teams – FTC3737 Hanks Tanks, FTC5436 Aluminum Cobblers, FTC6032 Lightning Hawks – but we look forward to their hosting a Qualifier next season.

We understand these reschedule dates may present issues for some of you and we sincerely regret this.  Please know these are the only weekends available to us for reschedule and to preserve in-person play for the season.  We thank you for your understanding and will do our best to work with those of you that are impacted.

Note: Our BTI web team will be making Event date/location edits to our website tomorrow; please disregard the as of yet unchanged information. 

As stated at Kickoff, our goal is to provide two (2) plays to every team this season, and we are working on potential solutions that will still allow us to meet this goal.  We will update you as soon as we have more information.

**IMPORTANT​​**​​​ Remote Events still a Possibility 

Given the ongoing Omicron situation our planning team is meeting later this week to review the revised season plan.

In rescheduling the 4 events we did so realizing we are not ‘out of the woods’ yet with Omicron and there remains a high level of uncertainty with regard to its continued impacts.   We will be at a decision point soon in that we need to make a final Go-or-No-Go decision with regard to holding in-person events or moving the season to Remote.

Our concern is that we find ourselves in a situation where we decide to continue in-person play only to find our Event Hosts, their schools, Key Volunteers/Volunteers, etc. become impacted by COVID and are unable to support the in-person model.  If this happens, we will be in a situation that does not leave reasonable time for teams to shift their strategies and robot to better compete in the Remote model, thereby leaving us without a good play solution for the season.

Our goal is to have decision is by January 17.

Deb