It’s truly beginning to look a lot like Robotics competition season! At Prior Lake High School Saturday, November 19, The Green Machine, KING TeC, and Blue Twilight co-hosted the 2nd annual Minne-Mini Regional, an event aimed at creating a “mini” version of the actual regional tournaments that happen in Spring 2012. The purpose of the event was to teach FRC rookies how to do various tasks required by FIRST teams at real events, like robot inspection, how to queue properly, how to scout other robots and how to be where you need to be when you needed to be there.
In order for all of this to happen, many team members and mentors from 2169, 1816 and 2220 put in a lot of hours to set up the competition floor on the Friday night before the big day. Many of those people were somewhat sleep deprived on Saturday morning, as they were setting up from right after school let out to 2 AM! The hard work that was done by these three teams did not go unrewarded: The walls held up, the drivers’ stations were sturdy, and everything looked great too.
At the Minne-Mini Regional, 24 teams traveled from all over Minnesota and Team 876 came in from North Dakota. Only one team was not able to come, however a backup team was there and ready to play, so that every alliance was a threesome. Everyone was pumped for the competition and many teams demonstrated their team spirit. KING TeC has a chemistry teacher that wears a kilt and tirelessly shouted their team number into the stands. Blue Twilight brought its blue twinkly light-up top hats and The Green Machine, with help from teams in the stands, got everyone surrounding it to do the wave. Team flags were also on display, with members parading around the running track that circled the gym floor. Team 2574-RoboHuskies brought their team mascot, who danced with team members and even some of the regional volunteers helping to run the event. Many of the robots from2011’s LOGOMotion competition did well, but there were signs that it was time to retire several of them. Our own ZEEBO looked like it deserved a long rest, not moving much during several matches.
The Green Machine would like to congratulate the competition winners: 2052-KnightKrawlers, Irondale; 2847-Cardinals, Fairmont, and Team 3291-Pi-Rats, Brooklyn Park.
Many of the 1816 members attending the Minne-Mini were rookies, including this writer. It was an amazing experience. Everyone was having tons of fun and the benefit was meeting many new people from different schools. This is very different from other competitions that I have been to because everyone was helping each other and cheering for teams other than their own! It’s one thing to hear about FIRST and Gracious Professionalism, it’s another thing to live the experience. This is how every competition should be because it’s just more fun this way.