A Letter from FIRST Tech Challenge Director, Ken Johnson

Dear FIRST Tech Challenge Community, 

Super-Regional events were implemented in FIRST Tech Challenge starting with competitions held in 2014. Those hosts have done wonderful jobs creating an entirely new competition level within the program. This has allowed us to expand our capacity, provide teams more chances to compete, and continue to have a merit based path to World Championships. The success of Super-Regionals has cemented this competition level into the progression of FIRST Tech Challenge events.

Our original four Super-Regional hosts agreed to three-years of hosting. This allowed them longer planning windows and leveraged the strong, cross-regional, organizing committees formed for this purpose. As we wind down the first three year cycle we've been working on the next three year cycle.

The process to select the next series of Super-Regional hosts was lengthy, and covered most of 2015. We had hosting bids from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia, Iowa, Washington State, and Alaska. Each bid involved a tremendous amount of thought and effort, and all were outstanding.

The selection of the four host regions was difficult, however the selections have been made. Starting in 2017 Pennsylvania and Iowa will again host Super-Regionals for three years. Georgia and Washington will be new Super-Regional hosts starting in 2017.

We are excited for this next series of Super-Regionals and hope to expand the number of Super-Regionals in the future. Thanks to all those who offered to host, you all made the decisions hard - which makes it even better for our teams and the FIRST Tech Challenge community.

Thanks,
Ken Johnson
Director, FIRST Tech Challenge


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