Dear ARML Team,
It was great to see everyone at practice last Sunday, and I enjoyed closing our practice with an ice cream social.
A few updates for this week, including a couple action items:
Team Assignments
We announced the roster for this year’s two elite teams (A1 and A2) on Sunday. Those teams are listed below. As always, with all of the talent that we have on our team, it was quite a difficult decision.
We will split our remaining teams into groups of 15 students. These teams are not ranked, and will be divided regionally by default. We plan to announce our regional teams at this weekend’s practice, and to practice in those teams on Saturday.
We’re opening a limited time opportunity for students on regional teams to request teammates. If you are on a regional team, you may submit a request by end-of-day Thursday (today) to be placed on a team with specific other students. While it might not be possible to fulfill every such request, we intend to honor these requests as much as possible in the selection process.
Please note that practice attendance is a factor in both elite team placement and selection of alternates; see the Policies for more information. In particular, elite team members who miss practices may be removed from their teams, and we will select alternates during the week prior to the competition based primarily on practice attendance.
If you’d like to request teammates, please complete the following form by end of day Thursday (today):
Second Bay Area Practice
Our second Bay Area practice will take place on Saturday, noon to 5pm at Willow Glen Community Center in San Jose. The details are on the practice website. Like this past weekend, we’ll spend the last 45 minutes of practice doing something fun to help everyone meet each other. We encourage everyone to carpool to practice with others from your city or area.
For Bay Area students, if you’re unable to attend, please fill out our practice absence form and provide a (good) reason. Examples of good reasons include health issues and conflicting events; we discourage using studying for exams as a reason to miss practice.
Practice Materials and Optional Homework
Practice materials from our tryouts and the first Bay Area practice have now been posted. Note that each team at practice covers different material – if your team hasn’t covered something yet, please don’t review it on your own, as your team will likely use this material at our next practice.
We have posted an individual round on ContestDojo as optional practice material. If you’d like to partake, you may complete this individual round at any time on ContestDojo. We’ll post additional individual rounds weekly throughout the month. These individual rounds are auto-graded, and coaches will not review your submissions or look at your scores – this is purely for yourself. Solutions can be found at the same practice materials link.
T-Shirt Poll
We have received two t-shirt designs, each with two options. Please vote for your preferred design by 3pm Friday. The winning design will be announced at practice on Saturday, and teams will vote on their preferred shirt colors.
Transportation
We will provide transportation to Reno for all traveling students and chaperones. Everyone traveling will be assigned a pickup time and location, departing at around 8am on May 30 and returning at around 8pm on May 31. Pickup and dropoff locations this year are anticipated to be the same as last year, in San Jose, Palo Alto, San Ramon, and Davis.
A number of you have asked about traveling independently with parents to ARML. In order to maintain supervision during the trip, we require that any student traveling independently to be dropped off and picked up at UNR at designated times. We anticipate these time intervals to approximately a 1:30pm dropoff on Friday and a 3pm pickup on Saturday. If you are intending to travel independently, please let me know, so I can record this information prior to making bus assignments.
As always, if you have any questions, please let us know!
–Moor and the rest of the SFBA/NorCal coaching staff
A1 Team
Redacted for the website – email info@sfbanorcalarml.org if you need assistance.
A2 Team
Redacted
Regional Team Members – Sacramento
Redacted
Regional Team Members – Bay Area
Redacted