[MechEng83]

My team just hosted an FTC qualifying tournament yesterday.

Nemo gave a pretty good summary of what's required. I definitely recommend planning the event far in advance -- because of a late decision to host, we only had about 2 1/2 months to plan. This was extremely stressful, and our parents who helped run it had very limited experience with FTC. Our tournament director had actually never been to an FTC tournament before!

Referees and Judges are very difficult to find, and several other key volunteer positions also require certification training.

My biggest frustration was trying to establish and enforce traffic patterns (I did queuing). I had to post "guards" at every possible entrance to the playing area to prevent parents, spectators and other unauthorized individuals from entering the competition area. Teams also tried to queue through exits and the end gaps, which made verifying that teams had showed up very difficult. Our tournament only had 16 teams, which also meant that teams very often would leave the field only to be right back in the queue.