The first event we participated in was the Great Northern Regional in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was a week 1 event and we were excited and ready to participate! We finished in 2nd place with a record of 13-5-0 at the end of the event. We made it to the finals and won the Regional Finalist award which earned us a Wildcard spot to Championships. The second event we attended was the Iowa Regional in Cedar Falls, Iowa. We finished in 6th place with a record of 12-5-0. We made it to the finals round of the playoffs and were again Regional Finalists! Being Regional Finalists, we once again earned a Wildcard spot to Championships! We were also excited to win the Judges’ Award. We were very proud when our mentors, Bob and Debbie Guetzlaff, were awarded Volunteers of the Year award.
This was the first year Championships were located in Detroit and we were excited to experience it. After exciting playoff matches, we were thrilled to make it to the semi-final rounds of the divisional playoffs with our alliance!
In the off-season, we still participated in the Cow Town Throwdown located in Lee’s Summit in Missouri. We finished 2nd with a record of 13-3-0. This gave new students a chance to experience a regional-like setting as well as allowing more students to get to experience being on a drive team.
This year’s game is FIRST Power Up and teams are trapped in an 8bit video game! Team’s goal is to use power cubes to defeat the boss. Each three-team alliance can defeat the boss by owning the scale or their switch, playing power ups, and/or climbing the scale tower. For the first 15 seconds of the match, robots are operated autonomously and score points by reaching their own autonomous line and/or gaining ownership of the scale or their switch. For the final 2 minutes and 15 seconds of the match, alliances score points by gaining ownership of the scale or their switch, delivering power cubes to the alliance’s vault, using power ups for a timed advantage, and parking on a scale platform or climbing the scale to face the boss. The alliance with the highest score at the end of the match defeats the boss and wins!