Kansas City Region FLL Head Referee
This site contains information from the Kansas City's Regional Head Referee about the 2023-24 FLL Challenge Robot Game - Masterpiece. It is intended as an aid for regional coaches, teams, and referees and will be updated throughout the season. Unless FIRST releases a rules update on a Friday, no updates will be made after 10 pm on the Thursday before any regional tournament. For the Dec 8th Friday tournament at Troost Elementary, the last update will be no later than 10pm on Wednesday the 6th.
As of 9/10/23 the entire site has been updated for the current season.
Site contents:
2023-24 KC FLL Season Results -- Includes my Robot Game presentation from the 9/16/23 Coaches' Training
The last rules update from FIRST was released on 12/7/2023; it contains update 10.
NOTE: Due to the decentralized structure of FLL anything on this page may be different in another region, at Worlds, or in any after-season competition. Everything here holds for any official KC Region FLL tournament and at pre-season tournaments where the refs are provided by KCFIRST. The tournaments where the site applies are:
There will be no virtual scrimmages or qualifiers in the Kansas City region this year
Unofficial scrimmage - October 28th - CowTown ThrowDown at Lee's Summit High School
Unofficial scrimmage - November 4th at Park Hill High School
Q1 – November 11th - Lawrence High School
Q2 - November 18th - North Kansas City High School
Q3 - December 2nd - Olathe NW High School
Q4 - December 8th - Troost Elementary -- Note this is a Friday; it is the only non-Saturday tournament
Q5 - December 16th - Metropolitan Community College -- Penn Valley
Kansas City Regional Championships - January 20, 2024 - Crown Center
Remember that any rules updates published by FIRST take precedence over the rules released on August 1st. All teams need to be checking regularly for updates on the Challenge, Updates, & Resources page on the FIRST web site, and coaches need to carefully monitor emails from FIRST or from KC FIRST. The last rules update from FIRST was released on December 12th, 2023.
Teams will work with the referee at their table to complete their scoresheet after each match. Referees will give teams the Benefit of the Doubt when the situation is unclear. If the team and their referee can't agree then the tournament Head Ref will make final decisions. I use this site to help teams understand how I would make decisions at a tournament.
I'll be updating the page throughout the season as I answer questions from coaches & teams, as rules updates are released, or when I get other information that I feel may be of use to teams. If you have a question that isn't answered here you may email me at kcFLLref@gmail.com. I'll try and answer all questions, but you'll be much more likely to get a satisfactory response if the question is about the rules as opposed to "will this solution legally score on mission XXXX?"
This site is not authoritative for any FLL region other than Kansas City. If you're from another region you should consult your regional partner or head referee instead of relying on the information here.
Michael Hartwig, KC Regional Head Ref since 2014.