Tryouts and practices this weekend; t-shirts and song contest

Hi everyone, 

We will have practices again this week at the usual times: 5pm-7pm Pacific time on both Saturday and Sunday. See the practice website for details. As usual, we will send out the Zoom link for practice in this mailing list.

This week's practices: 

This week, in addition to the usual ARML tests and a Guts round (which we're scaling up to a "Guts Party" this weekend!),  Nick Wu will do a session on Advanced Topics in Competitive Programming. Please click the link for details (and there's a survey there for you to tell Nick what you want to see). As in past weeks, both Saturday and Sunday will offer the same breakout room choices; if you attend both days, you should select different breakout rooms the second time. 

Tryouts this weekend:

We plan to participate in the FARML competition on May 16 and the ARML Local competition on May 30. As I mentioned in my previous email, we will field as many teams as necessary to allow everyone to participate. The coaching staff will select a few "elite" teams to compete against other top teams from around the country. If you'd like to be considered for one of the elite teams, we are holding tryouts this weekend and next weekend. 

This year, we are asking that students opt-in for consideration for elite teams. By default, you would not be considered for elite team selection regardless of your score. If you would like to be considered for an elite team, please fill out our opt-in form (click the link). Note: we know that many of you have already filled out some of this information when you signed up for the email list, but you need to complete this form to be considered for team selection.

If you want to try out for our elite teams, you should also attend tryouts. We will have tryouts both this weekend and next weekend, adjacent to the practices:

• Saturday, April 25, 4-5pm Pacific (the hour before our Saturday practice -- we will start promptly at 4pm; I will send out the Zoom link by 3:50pm, and please be online and ready to do math by 3:55pm if possible.)
• Sunday, April 26, 7-8pm Pacific (the hour after our Sunday practice)
• Saturday, May 2, 7pm-8pm Pacific time
• Sunday, May 3, 4pm-5pm Pacific time
  

Every practice will feature different content, so we will have four distinct tryout opportunities. You are encouraged to attend as many as possible. And you're also encouraged to attend regardless of whether you're formally trying out for an elite team -- feel free to come by even if you just want to do an extra hour of math before or after practice. 

Note: If you're from a location outside of the Bay Area, Northern California, or what we've traditionally called "Wild Wild West" (AZ, ID, MT, NE, parts of NV, NM, ND, SD, WY), you're welcome to come to tryouts. If your home region has a FARML or ARML Local team, you should compete with them for the official competition; if your home region does not have a FARML or ARML Local team, you're welcome to join one of our teams.

T-Shirts: 

One of the great traditions of ARML is for teams to design matching t-shirts to wear on the day of the competition. Even though we aren't traveling to a national competition this year, we will intend to have shirts. We invite you to submit a design for this year's team t-shirt! After designs are submitted, the full team will vote on their favorite.

Designs should consist of a front design and a back design. To keep screen-printing costs low, you can use either (a) three colors on one side and one color on the other, or (b) two colors on each side.

When submitting your design, send an email to arml@mathleague.org with exactly four files:
A .png file (.jpeg is okay in a pinch) of the front design, preferably superimposed on a t-shirt shape to show how it's positioned
A .png file of the back design (like the above)
A vector-graphics file (such as .tif) of the front design
A vector-graphics file of the back design
The .png files will be used on the ballot for voting on designs, while the vector-graphics files will be sent to the printer if your design is chosen.

This year, we have a combined year covering "SFBA/NorCal" or "Bay Area/Northern California" and "Wild Wild West" in addition to friends from elsewhere. If you choose to identify the team in your design, you can use those or similar terms. You might also want to include "ARML", "2020", or other such things. None of these are mandatory. Please do not include anything offensive in the design; coaching staff reserve the right to censor or edit as necessary.

The deadline to submit designs is end of day on May 4th.

Song Contest:

Another ARML tradition from the East Coast is the Song Contest, where teams write math or ARML-themed songs (often parodies of popular songs) and perform them at the competition. We're importing this tradition this year, and we plan to hold our Song Contest some time in May. If you'd like to participate, this is a great time to start brainstorming. We accept both individual and group entries for the Song Contest.

The deadline to enter into the Song Contest is end of day on May 11th. We will likely ask you to submit a YouTube video, and we will invite finalists to perform at a later practice. Further details will come soon.

Logistics and housekeeping:

• Materials for past practice are now on the practice website. To view those files, please use username=sfba and password=arml.
  
• As usual, the Zoom link for practice will be sent to this email list approximately 10 minutes before each practice begins. Please log on with your real name, and try to be on time.
• See our email archive for a record of any past emails you may have missed. Zoom links won't be posted there though. http://sfbaarml.blogspot.com/.
• If you aren't on this mailing list (for example, if someone forwarded this email to you, or if you're seeing this on the email blog), you won't receive meeting links. Go to http://mathleague.org/armlapp.php to sign up for the email list.
  
• Feel free to forward this to anyone who might be interested in joining us at our practices. They'll need to sign up for our email list to receive Zoom links.

Hope to see many of you this weekend, and stay safe!

Best,

Moor