I just want to add some words on these subjects...  My daughter is attending JMU.  A fan of FLL, every year, she and so many other JMU students have volunteered to work at the FLL championship tournament.  The two weeks following the tournament are final exams time for their fall semester.  Moving the competition date into their final exam weeks is just unthinkable, and we will lose a lot of support from JMU students. 

My son used to compete in FLL and is now attending high school.  He and many other high school students volunteered to judge and referee at many of our regional tournaments.  Most of these students are in their high school’s robotics club competing in FIRST FRC where their competition season kicks in during January/February.  Moving the competition into that time frame will lose the support from our high schools because of schedule conflict with their very own FIRST robotics tournaments.

On the subject of TJ testing, the TJHSST’s director of admission has publicly made it very clear that they will not make exception to their testing -- unless the student was totally sick in bed that day.  So if the parent’s car broke down on testing day and the kid could not make it to the testing center, you are out of luck!  Yet, TJ do allow those students that travel to JMU for the championship tournament every year to be excuse early on TJ testing day.  These students will take the TJ standardized test but defer the essay writing test until a later day so they can attend their tournament at JMU.  The question one should ask is where TJ places FLL participations in their criteria for final selection of students for TJ – especially when every year they make the only exception for FLL champion tournament on testing day.  The answer may be very simple in that TJHSST is the VA’s science and technology high school and these kids have demonstrated success in reaching the (VA State) FLL championship tournament (of science and technology) at JMU.  How cool can it be if you are trying to get into TJ and your name is on a very short and prestige list of name sent from FIRST to the TJ admission office that year!  However, having your name on the list does not guarantee making TJ semifinalist or final selection for TJ, but it does not hurt to have your name on this short list that is being personally handle by the TJ’s director of admission herself.  She personally sends out e-mail to each kid’s parent notifying that their son/daughter is excused from the writing portion of the test to go to JMU for their FLL championship tournament.

A word for those coaches/parents that contemplate not to let their kids competing in FLL next year because of a potential TJ testing conflict, please stop and let your kids decides.  If they love robotics and have been competing in FLL during 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th grades, why stop them during their 8^th grade.  Think about this -- as it might even have a negative impact on their TJ application.  How will it look to the admission office if the kid just gave up on an excellent science and technology program such as FLL -- will this kid be successful in 4 years of high school in a very intensive science and technology program at TJ?

Final words on tinkling with the FLL competition date and schedule -- like those computer software programs, if it is not broken please don’t touch it!  JMU has done an outstanding job of planning and coordinating this FLL program for so many years.

Best wishes,

T. (Curt) Tran

Judges Advisor, GMU Regional ’11

Judges Advisor, TJHSST Regional ’09

Mentor Team #5390, Kilmer-I ’09

Mentor Team #8941, Kilmer-II ’09

Coach Team #324, Scitobor ’08

Coach Team #3563, Rabid Llama Lords ’07

I no longer have coaching skin in this game but will be a judge next year and moving forward at state.

Having a longer season would be great.  The short season is hard on the coach, the team and everyone. 

I don't want to dampen this converstion but there are other considerations that need to be accounted for. So in the mode of transparency and thinking through all the issues:

Understand running this tournament is part of a course that Nick teaches and I would guess moving that class to spring semester may be hard.  I know from my work at U of Richmond that some classes are taught in the fall because of specific course sequencing needs.

I'm also guessing that having the tournament late in the semester is advantageous to the class syllabus.  Even if these are not considerations, this would probably have to be planned for the 2013 season (so 2013-2014) because of scheduling dependencies with regional venues. I help coordinate a 24 team tournament in the Richmond area and we have already booked the space we need for next fall. Moving these dates can be challenging.

Eric Palmer
Team #7
The Rainbow Cows

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