When I was in FLL, competition day always felt a little bit like Christmas. You wake up really early and you rush downstairs and you get really excited about how fun the day is going to be.
Though I haven’t been part of competition day in FTC, here is some of what I have learned when I was in FLL. Keep in mind that it varies from place to place, and there are multiple levels of the competition, things might be different at competitions you have gone to or will go to.
On competition day, you sign in your team and they show you the pit. The pit is basically the place where you put all your stuff (your robot, your posters, snacks, etc…), and you can relax in between meetings with the judges. It depends on how many teams are there, but there’s either one big pit where all the teams go, or there’s lots of rooms and there are 2-3 teams in each. Your coaches go to a meeting in the morning and they get the schedule for the day. The schedule shows when you meet with the judges for the project, robot design, and core values. There are also sign up sheets for
In FLL, you get to meet so many different teams with all kinds of interesting ideas. You get to make friends in the pits and you get to look at lots of cool posters. Even though our team was always disappointed when we didn’t advance to the next round, we appreciated the knowledge we had gained throughout the day from other people who shared the same love of FLL.