2014
Chairman’s Award at Lake Superior Regional Earns The Green Machine’s trip to Nationals; Captain of Finalist Alliance at the North Star Regional; STEM Career Showcase; Workshop Visit from U.S. Senator Al Franken.
The Green Machine’s exciting and event-filled 2014 season began with a full schedule of pre-season activities, including a team-run popular Legos NXT Camp for younger students in the summer, presentations on FIRST robotics to sponsors DOW Water Solutions and Stratasys, workshops on safety and programming at Minne-Mini Regional, and the team-sponsored FIRST Day in Edina (successor event to SPARK Day), with a workshop open house and robot demonstrations that included Edina FTC and FLL teams. Team 1816 also helped run the first-ever FTC qualifying tournament held in Edina, and (that same day!) assisted with Robot Day at the Minnesota Children’s Museum. In November, the team also organized its first-ever STEM Career Showcase, highlighting the STEM careers of team mentors. The Green Machine was also proud to host a post-kickoff January visit to its workshop by U.S. Senator Al Franken. When competition season began, The Green Machine was ready!
At the Lake Superior Regional in Duluth, Team 1816 was thrilled to win the prestigious Chairman’s Award, earning a place at Championships in St. Louis. This year’s robot, Zeke, also performed well at the North Star Regional at the University of Minnesota, where Team 1816 captained the Finalist alliance and received the Gracious Professionalism Award. Team 1816 continued its “be FIRST” peer to peer campaign awarding FRC Teams 3313, 27, 2502, 3130, 2016, and 1736 with the 2014 “be FIRST” award. The Green Machine reached 35th place in the Archimedes Division at Championships, as the drive team pushed Zeke hard in every match. After Championships, 1816 competed in the third-annual Minnesota State High School League Robotics Competition, taking home the first ever 3rd place trophy.