Following our Open House on Sept 6th, we kept the momentum going with the Central Vermont FTC Kickoff Event. All the Vermont FTC teams were invited, and we were pumped to have representatives from five FRC teams join us too, along with some FLL and FRC members. It really felt like a full FIRST family gathering.

The highlight was watching the official FIRST video reveal for this year’s FTC challenge. Seeing the field setup and hearing the rules for the first time made everything feel real—the season had officially started! After the reveal, teams got to walk around a full-size field in person, which was super helpful for brainstorming strategy and robot design ideas.

Everyone split into smaller groups to think through what features a competitive robot might need—like scoring mechanisms, mobility, and game strategies. Then, each group shared their ideas with the larger crowd. It was cool hearing how different teams approached the same problem, and you could tell people were already starting to imagine what their bots could look like.

Events like this are one of the best parts of being in FIRST—you’re not just building robots, you’re building a community. Even though we’re all competitors once the season starts, at kickoff we’re all learning together, trading ideas, and getting excited for what’s ahead.

For The Outlaws, it was another chance to connect with the Vermont robotics community and keep showing that Central Vermont is ready to play a bigger role in FIRST.