Kansas BEST Newsletter - August 2026

Wishes do come true on occasion.  WSU Athletics finished all their event scheduling, and no one had claimed November 7 so we can return to WSU Koch Arena this year.  Very excited for that.  It is a great venue.

Here are the teams registered for the 2026 competition.  If you think you registered, but don’t see your team here, please try it again.

·       Campus High School Returning

·       Central Christian Academy

·       Council Grove High School

·       Derby High School  Returning

·       Ellinwood High School

·       Garden City High School

·       Kapaun Mt. Carmel Catholic High School

·       Lakewood Middle School  NEW

·       McHomes Homeschool Co-op

·       Quark Robotics - Rose Hill

·       Republic County High School

·       Rock Creek High School

·       Solomon High School  Returning

·       USD 300 - South Central High School

·       West Franklin High School Returning

·       Wichita Collegiate HS

·       Wichita Homeschool

We had 6 attendees at the Workshop, 2 current coaches and 4 prospective.  Welcome Lakewood MS (Salina) and Derby HS!  We look forward to you joining the fun this year.

If you have students, staff, or parents  that are aspiring photographers, journalists, or performers that would like to help us with photography, live streaming, or running the match clock during our events please put them in touch with me.  

Kickoff this year will start in the CAC Theater on WSU Campus.  This sits on the west side of Rhatigan Student Center.  We will have the kit distribution in the lobby of the CAC Theater, and the game reveal will be in the Theater as well.  Breakout sessions will be on the second floor of Rhatigan.  We will start promptly at 9:00.  There is plenty of parking for buses.  The interactive map for WSU can be found here.  Parking is open on Saturdays (exceptions: any handicapped stalls, fire lanes, marked reserved stalls, service and loading zones, timed parking areas, or the parking garage).

We will have 6 different breakout sessions (approximately 45 minutes each) before we reveal this year’s game and field.  There are some substantial changes to the Marketing components this year so there will be 2 sessions dedicated to those.  The others will be Critical Design Reviews, Notebooks, Building a Robot, and Software.

Once you have your team registered, you will have access to some public resources via the Team Workflow.  In the section ‘Annual Game Files’ there are several documents, videos and links.  One that I had not discovered until the workshop was example Notebooks. You have to be persistent and drill down the folders (see below), but you might find some gems in there to help you.

We also had a question about a basic lesson plan for the 8 weeks, and found this…..