It’s been a busy four months for our Edina FIRST Tech Challenge teams. During the 2020-2021 FTC season, we were unable to meet as teams in-person, but once school began this fall, we returned to in-person build sessions and tournaments. Our 2021-2022 FTC teams overall have had a great season with this year’s competition, Freight Frenzy. From Tough Cookies going to state to Bucket Brigade being nominated for the Innovate Award, all six teams saw success. Of these six FTC teams, three are advancing to the state competition in February. Here’s how we got there: “Piece of Cake” and “Tough Cookies” were winning alliance partners in qualifying competitions. The third team going to state is “Since Sliced Bread” as they were the winning alliance captain and Inspire Award winner in another qualifying tournament. And that’s just the beginning. The teams earned quite a few awards! Teams “Bucket Brigade” and “On a Roll” were nominated for the Innovate Award. Team “Easy as Pi” won two Control Awards and was nominated for the Think Award and Motivate Award. On top of all that, the three advancing teams won their fair share of awards as well. Teams that are not going to state have the choice to participate in the off-season, where they can continue to work on their robot, learn how to code or continue learning about robotics and STEM through a plethora of online options . The three teams advancing to state continue the engineering process as they enhance their robots in preparation for the state tournament on February 11. Learn more about Edina FTC Robotics by visiting the website and to see additional photos and videos from the season.
–By Nora B.