FIRST Tech Challenge

We are excited to begin our fourth FTC season. The FIRST theme for 2023-2024 is FIRST in SHOW. The FIRST Tech Challenge season is called #CENTERSTAGE. You can keep up with us on our FTC Center Stage season page. We’ll update this page with the 2023-2024 game details in September after kickoff.

2020-2021 was our “FTC Rookie Season”. You can review it on our FTC Ultimate Goal season page.

2021-2022 was our second season, in which we were able to attend the FTC World Championship. You can read about our FTC Freight Frenzy season here.

What is FIRST Tech Challenge?

“It’s way more than building robots. FIRST Tech Challenge teams (up to 15 team members, grades 7-12) are challenged to design, build, program, and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format.

Guided by adult coaches and mentors, students develop STEM skills and practice engineering principles, while realizing the value of hard work, innovation, and working as a team.”

FIRST Tech Challenge, is a move up from LEGOs to 18″ aluminum and steel robots. Each season begins in September when the new challenge is released. Depending on region, scrimmages, qualifiers, and state tournaments begin as early as November leading up to the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship in April.

The components of an FTC competition are:

  • Robot Games – 5-6 qualification rounds played in randomized alliance format, followed by alliance selection and elimination rounds — Games are 2.5 minutes long, the first 30 seconds are autonomous and the remainder is remote controlled. The game field is 12′ x 12′ on foam tiles with a 1′ high perimeter.
  • Engineering Portfolio (required) – 15 pages max – summary of your season and team, see Game Manual 1 for specifics
  • Engineering Notebook (optional) – all documentation about your season, engineering design process, programming, outreach, team business and more
  • Judges Interview – Presentation and Q&A time with the judges about your robot and season

Official FTC Resources:

Unofficial FTC Resources:

Here is the 2022-2023 Season Challenge Video. The specifics about last season’s challenge start at about the 1 minute mark. If you have questions about FIRST robotics, FIRST LEGO League or FIRST Tech Challenge, please let us know. We would love to help you get started.

Past Season Blogs

Latest Instgram Posts

Throwback Thursday! State Championship 2022 celebratory dinner at Olive Garden with @fb3_robotics_team. What’s everyone in this photo up to? Happy Festival of Lights! 🕎 Bye bye Pascal v3! Disassembly in progress, changing designs as we go. We had a great time in Butte at Montana Qualifier 1! Thank you @5026_tesla_coils for choosing us for your alliance. We’ll see everyone at the championship in February. Pascal v4 coming soon. 🦎🤖 Making new friends at Montana Qualifier 1! Thank you @mtechswe for coming to the tournament today, sharing and encouraging all the young women at the event! @firstlikeagirl Long day, drove to Butte. Had a tour at the Electrical Engineering department at MT Tech, did a fun programming activity, had dinner at the Student Union Building, helped set up the tournament venue and got our pit table most of the way setup. Breakfast is at 6:00am, have to be back at the college at 7:00 for the tournament. 🤩🤩🤩 Tradition! We stop at Cracker Barrel in Missoula for brunch and always get a team photo sitting in the rocking chairs. We made it safe to MT Tech. Qualifier Tournament tomorrow. We are getting the final tweaks in before our Saturday qualifier! 🤩 All the print jobs have gone to the print shop, we are almost packed, we’ve gotten as much driver practice as we’re gonna get, and we’ll get the last auto code tweaked tomorrow night. 💜🖤💜🖤💜 Happy 13th Anniversary Tangled! Our favorite artistic princess and her supportive sidekick are the inspiration for our Center Stage season.
%d