Edina Robotics FIRST Team 1816-The Green Machine is pleased to have been able to participate in a pre-season competition dubbed “The Twilight Star Mini-Regional” on November 15th. Named in honor of the host, Team 2220-Blue Twilight of Eagan High School, the mini-regional competition featured fourteen regional teams from around the state and as far away as North Dakota. For the competition, each team brought their 2007-08 competition robot for replay of the FIRST Overdrive game. Lasting most of the day Saturday, the event began the evening before with a team social. The event gave the participating teams one last chance to engage in some friendly competition before the next build season begins just after New Year’s Day. The event also engaged some of the newest FRC competitors, those of rookie teams, who came to learn as much as possible about robot building.
Although there were a few technical issues associated with controlling the robots during the competition, The Green Machine’s 2008 robot, Zerkit, performed well, hurdling balls over the overpass as it had many times previously during competitions during the spring and summer. It was a great deal of fun to participate in one last Overdrive competition before buckling down to the work of a new six-week build session.
More important than competing one last time, off-season and pre-season events such as this one serve as a valuable teaching tool to introduce new teams and team members to the excitement of FIRST. In particular, newly formed rookie teams were invited and offered the opportunity to shadow veteran teams throughout the event. Team 2705, from the International School of Minnesota, Eden Prairie, a rookie team that the Green Machine will mentor this season, got a first-hand look at what goes on at an often hard-to-visualize competition. Alex N, 1816’s Business Captain, comments, “it was great to come here and see all the teams again, and to also help get the new teams and members up to speed on the program.” He also added, “it was also nice to be able to get to discuss some of the more business aspects of the program with members from other teams, and share ideas on things like fundraising.”
In addition to the Green Machine, the attending teams were Team 2129-Ultraviolet, Minneapolis Southwest; Team 2177-The Robettes, Visitation High School; Team 2264-Trojan Robotics, Wayzata; Team 2545-BAExx, Columbia Heights; Team 2479-Urban Supreme, Minneapolis North High School; Team 2574-RoboHuskie, St. Anthony Village; Team 876-Thunder Robotics, Hatton, North Dakota; Team 2472-RoboSapiens, Centennial Senior High; Team 2531-Hawks, Chaska; Team 2491-Rapids, Great River High School, Team 2518-Spartans, Simley High School; Team 2450-RaiderBots, Cretin-Derham Hall; and Team 2667-How ‘bout Dem Apples, Apple Valley High School.