Overview:
As the first competition back post-covid, the team was excited to display our hard work at the 10,000 Lakes Regional on April 7-9. Although there were a few hiccups, the team is ready to learn from this experience and make the necessary changes to the robot before the state competition on May 7th. We played an intense finals match, finishing 2nd overall as regional finalists.  Our record was 9-0-8 (Win-Tie-Loss) for the entirety of the competition, including the playoff matches.

Thursday:
It was a scramble to put all the robot parts together on the first day. There were discrepancies between the mechanical and software aspects of our robot that caused many unforeseen issues. One of those issues were a slow cycling period and an inconsistent autonomous program. A huge props to our programming team for fine-tuning the auto alignment code and to build team for making the necessary adjustments to the mechanical counterparts.

Friday:
Issues from Thursday carried over to our second day of competition.  We had  problems with both our shooter and climber mechanism breaking throughout matches. Despite quick turnovers between matches, our pit crew was able to repair everything, allowing us to compete in all of our matches. Our drive team also adapted quickly to plans going awry, changing our match strategy on the fly and transitioning to a defense robot to prevent the other alliance from scoring. This ended up being very effective, as we were able to prevent the top teams from scoring. This also allowed for our robot to stand out, and keep us in the running for playoff selections.

Saturday:
At the end of qualifications, we were chosen by 2052 to compete in the playoffs, and together we made it to the finals without dropping a match. The finals were a tense game that went into a tiebreaker round. While we ended up losing the tiebreakers, the drive team managed to surprise the crowd with a great defense against the opponent’s top scorer and traversing to the highest rung at the last minute.

Remote Pit Interview:
To minimize the spread of covid, the pit interviews for awards were done virtually instead of at the competition–a change from years past. This was a new experience for us, and even though  we did not win any awards, it gave us more experience for better presenting our robot in future seasons.

Thank You

For our first and only competition, 10,000 Lakes went better than expected, and it is thanks to our generous sponsors. Without your support, we would not have been able to afford the materials for the robot. We also want to thank the mentors who offered their guidance in non-monetary ways. 

Thank you for continuing to be a part of our journey!