We’re gaining momentum in bringing back our Team’s off-season preparations and training routines.
Our off-season training began only a few weeks after the May 2023 MSHSL-FIRST State Championship. During the summer months, we walked prospective students through elements of robot design & build challenges, mock-kickoffs, tool training, and lots of singing along to infamous FIRST Robotics Competition songs (Ex: “FIRST Train”, “Here comes our Bot” “Best Bot Ever”). Throughout the summer and into the fall, we did outreach events including visiting our enduring team sponsors, demonstrating “yes you can do this at home” science experiments as part of our residency as science experts at the MN Children’s Hospital’s inhouse TV show, Star Studio, and running our robot during Robot Week at the Mt. Olivet camp for students with autism.
The off-season, especially the annual Team Retreat, is always a great opportunity for our team to reevaluate our goals. And, this October was the first year since 2019 that we were able to do an overnight retreat. The Team Retreat is how we introduce rookies to what it means to be on “The Green Machine”, meaning our mission and core values. We also did many fun activities such as tie dyeing team retreat t-shirts (a new addition to our official team event apparel); a dance battle, a team building communications game that included a lot of LEGO, and, of course, swimming in the hotel pool. This team retreat was a huge success and one that is a happy return to pre-COVID traditions!
With the off-season comes off-season competitions and Team 1816 had a successful first 2023-24 offseason at the Minnesota Robotics Invitational (MRI). Our goals with this off-season event were to test out a new scouting and strategy approach and to place rookies interested in pit crew and backup drive team positions. In the past couple of months, we have been working towards a more qualitative approach rather than a quantitative approach to scouting. We are still looking through our scouting data and feedback, but the scouter experience was much improved! Along with accomplishing our set goals, we also got chosen by the 4th seed alliance captain and ended in 3rd place alongside 4198 RoboCats and 2470 Team BJORG! The work (and the learning) never stops because in the last match our elevator broke in two places after the extension mechanism got stuck. Repairing “ZERO” hopefully one last time before we head to the Minne-Mini tournament in November, the last scrimmage and time we’ll play the 2023 game, Charged Up!.
Team 1816 participated in Medtronic’s annual Jumpstart event to go into the 2024 Season with new perspectives and lessons learned. “The Green Machine” enjoyed both teaching and learning aspects of this event. Co-Captain Venna W. presented on our Girls in the Workshop program including a step-by-step tutorial on how to involve underrepresented groups in FIRST and STEM. This empowering conversation between girls from numerous teams as well as women and men mentors explored the difficulty of speaking up for yourself, recruitment, and the importance of a supportive environment. Here is a link to the presentation: Girls in the Workshop Expanded 2024. Captain Emeritus and Mechanical Lead Kaylie C. presented on Leveraging Prior Season ‘Lessons Learned’ to Ensure Better Outcomes. Kaylie shared personal experiences through her two years on Team 1816 and unique perspective as Mechanical Lead and Primary Robot Driver. Here is a link to Kaylie’s presentation. 1816 team members learned at numerous sessions like “Electrical, Controls setup, Pneumatics”, “Critical Thinking Case Study: Lessons From OceanGate”, and “Culture and Structure of FRC Success”. 1816 also shared our point of view on a panel with Team 2052 KrightKrawler on how we manage our teams and are consistently successful, including continual appearances at the FIRST World Championships. This event is always extremely valuable in learning from other teams, it truly exemplifies FIRST’s spin on competition, cooperation, and collaboration (known as Coopertition).
As always, the offseason continues to prepare us for the challenges to come in the 2024 Season “CRESCENDO.” If the teaser is any indication, we’re in for another amazing game challenge!
By Venna W.