Just weeks ago, FRC Team 1816 competed at the Minnesota North Star Regional at the University of Minnesota’s Mariucci Arena, and it was a huge success for “The Green Machine.” The competition took place from April 6 to April 8, 2022. First off, our pit crew did an amazing job showing what the team is all about. This was our first in-person judged event since 2019 (the previous events being virtual judging during the peak of the COVID pandemic), and this required a new level of presentation practice. The first day at Mariucci involved practice matches, as our drive team continued to refine our on-field strategy to play the 2022 FIRST Robotics Competition RAPID REACT game. During the 10 matches on Friday and Saturday, our robot was able to successfully climb and reach the highest bar (the traversal) in almost all attempts. Despite the loss of a swerve-drive module, and the range calculations of our shooter being off, our drive team knocked game-play out of the park. The team put their inventive skills to work, applying tape to the wheel so it would slide with the robot and shooting from one location so we knew how much force to use with each shot. We ended the qualification rounds in eighth place, and were invited to be in the fourth alliance. Even though we were not the winning alliance, we still saw success as we won the Engineering Inspiration Award. This victory was due to our team’s outreach at the Minnesota State Capitol advocating for more funding for practice fields for Minnesota FIRST teams. This additional state funding would help underwriting practice fields, where teams can get ready for competitions just like other varsity athletes. Winning this culture-change award created a wild card, which paved the way for FRC Team 2129-Ultraviolet, a team we practice with at our local competitive practice field (known as MURA), to participate at the FIRST World Championships in Houston, Texas April 20-23.
–By Nora B. and Venna W.