On May 25th, Wednesday morning, the rising ninth graders of South View middle school and Valley View middle school were invited to Edina High School to take a tour in preparation for the upcoming school year. Due to our very recent success in winning the MSHSL State Robotics Championship (see highlights here at this link) we were invited to be one of the activities demoing in front of these students. Our first demo was for the Valley View middle schoolers, and unfortunately, our robot moved only for a brief two seconds before losing connection. We couldn’t get it working in the time allotted for the demo. Instead, Adele S. (co-captain) and Henry D. explained who FRC 1816, “The Green Machine” is and how we build our robots. The cheerleaders, who were scheduled after us, ended up going earlier than planned while we troubleshooted on why our robot had stopped working. It ended up being a faulty ethernet cable, something we’ve had problems with in the past, we ended up replacing it with a spare cable. We got it working just in time! We shot some cargo, attempting to make it into a trash can, and earned loud cheers from the stands. We asked for volunteers towards the end, getting a boy who enthusiastically took up the challenge of catching cargo while some of The Green Machine members fed the robot cargo. The second demo was much more successful. We explained what our FIRST Robotics Competition team is, and what we do, to the assembled South View students, and again called for volunteers. The students clamored to be chosen, about ten of them rushing down the bleachers before we could select anyone specifically. We shot the cargo again, and the students “battled” to catch the game pieces, earning victorious cheers from the crowd. Not quite as roof-raising loud as when we were at the MSHSL State Championship, but enough to make everyone happy. One of the highlights of the entire demo came when we were finishing up the first demo to the Valley View students. The boy who had volunteered to catch the cargo ran back to his friends, pulling his shirt off and spinning it over his head, like one would after scoring a touchdown in football! He was promptly escorted out of the gymnasium, but it was still really funny. The Team could not stop laughing. It was an overall awesome experience and 1816 hopes we inspired some students to get involved in FIRST and Edina Robotics.
-Kaylie C.