Hi all,
Our team will be hosting a FLL competition at our school in early November, and I was wondering what to expect. Does anyone have any insights into what to expect? Common pitfalls hosts might encounter? Or just your experience in general?
Excited to see your replies! 
It’s a lot of work. Our school/team hosted an event 3 years ago and we only barely managed it with the help of a bunch of teachers and parents.
Planning it for the first time took a lot of the summer.
My school has hosted an FLL event for the past eight years. I have volunteered for 5 of them. It is definitely a great thing to have the opportunity to do, however, it takes planning and organization. Posting parking is pretty big, of course depends entirely on the location. Make sure you have enough volunteers for the number of teams you expect. It is a requirement on my FRC team to help out, but that is not always enough. Accommodate the visiting teams well if you want to create sustainability for the event, and want teams to return in the future. I’m fortunate that my school has hosted ours for so long, the people involved have experience. But for a first-time host, it can be tough. Most important of all, make sure everyone has fun. These kids could be future leaders of your team.
Contact your alumni team members to serve as refs, judges, etc.
Based on your experience, how many volunteers should we ideally get from our team? We have 50~ members and supposedly 32 FLL teams are going to be at our event.
I was informed that FIRST supplied many of the volunteers for the event. How many of the volunteers should we actively find ourselves? Thank you.
I’ve hosted several FLL qualifiers - I stopped a few years ago because no one from the FRC team we partnered with stepped up and I do not have the bandwidth to do it myself.
In our region - all volunteers were on us, the hosts. You need a tournament director to run things, refs (I’d recommend one per table plus a head ref), judges (3 per room if you can get enough), registration desk person, someone in the pits to answer questions from teams, an MC, a judge advisor, some people to run concessions, and runners to bring teams to judging rooms. We also had hallway games for kids to play in between things (think things like cornhole, giant Connect 4, giant Jenga, we had a prize table with some small things from Oriental Trading and a face painter).
Factor in a dance party after the robot game while the judges finalize scripts.
If you are also including Explore, make sure you have reviewers for their teams, runners, someone to answer questions, etc.
Good communication with the teams competing about the flow of the event, schedule, expectations, food, etc are key. Whoever your tournament director is should be handling this.
Have you already completely planned the event (created a schedule, planned how it will be set up, ect.)? If not, you should try to get as many people with experience hosting events as possible, specifically parent/mentors who can help plan the event.
FIRST will only give you the number of volunteers who sign up to volunteer on the FIRST website, so if you want to ensure that you have enough volunteers you should try to have as many team members as volunteers for the day of the event and for planning it.
Definitely make sure you are communicating with the tournament director about how the event should be run/look, if you have not planned it exactly yet.
This varies significantly depending on your region. Different regions provide different things to tournament hosts.
For example, in the California - Southern Region:
The region provides:
The tournament organizer provides:
The above list is non-exhaustive and specific to our region. Your Program Delivery Partner should be able to provide you with a similar list of what you do and do not need.
What do you mean by this, exactly?
50 students is more than my team was ever able to give, but having some adult volunteers along with them is recommended of course. And for 32 teams should be plenty. We always have at least one student act as an ambassador for each team, plus refs, judges, and any other roles that don’t require an adult volunteer.
I’d say 55+ volunteers total (students + adults) should be a good number to stick to for 32 teams expected.
Just that FIRST might not be able to find enough volunteers for day of the competition, so the host should have a volunteers to fill in roles that don’t have enough people.
I’m confused. FIRST generally does not provide ANY volunteers for FLL events and local events recruit their own volunteers. Some regions have certain key roles preselected, but that’s about all.
Oh, I thought you could put a sign up form on their website for the event, and outside volunteers can sign up for the event through their FIRST account.
Anyone can sign up to volunteer at any event, and the local event assigns them. Both people you (a tournament organizer) directly recruit and people who find the event on their own, are signing up through FIRST’s portal, but you are assigning them and FIRST isn’t sending anyone to you. Hope this makes sense.
I suggest doing as much recruiting as you can. Many judging positions don’t need experience so older FRC students and your team parents, co-workers can help. Some areas may get lots of volunteer support from their FIRST partners but we’ve had good luck bringing in our own.
We host pre-order pizza, donuts and have a concessions stand. Offer a couple of practice fields. We use about 70 volunteers for 32 teams. 15 came from outside our team. Lean into your veterans if you can. We probably had 8 veterans.
In the PNW found by FIRST means that people who are interested in volunteering go into the FIRST portal and sign up for local events. FIRSTWA is recruiting and supporting us but populating the volunteer list is mostly our job.
We host in a high school so have lots of lunchroom tables. Each team is assigned 2 tables. One table is in the pits and one is in a lunch area.
Teams do have some down time. There are lots of simple activities you can offer. The FRC team can have their robots out. We normally create a scavenger hunt “find a team who has a member that can play the piano, find a team who has a bird as their mascot”.
If you want to see some images of FLL events LigerBots has a Flickr pager where there is photos from events going back many years.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ligerbots/albums/
Fall 2023 Qualifier Album(click on photo):
Fall 2023 District Champs Album(click on photo):
