NoMythic has been prepping for the upcoming T.E.S.T! On November 12th, we had our team tie dye day. This is a day where we color our signature team tie dye. We dyed our team shirts, and some students brought in their own clothes such as overalls, coveralls, and sweaters. This is a great bonding experience and is a big part of what makes NoMythic unique!
Build is currently split between two teams, Torbs and Griffin, to create two separate robots. Torbs have their robot basically completed, they need to do some small adjustments. Griffin has their drivetrain done and is training people in CAD and machinery, like X-carve!
Programming has been tinkering with motors in order to teach new programmers how to make motors move! They’ve also been working on Java, the swerve robot, and programming the T.E.S.T robot! `
Operations searched for new sponsors, and contacted them along with our old ones! They also worked on the team handbook to make sure it is ready for the team to look at, so that everyone on NoMythic has a way of documenting our processes and traditions.
The new robotics season has officially started! This October, we worked on building team spirit, training new students, and kick-off for this year’s T.E.S.T.! Build has been prototyping and putting their new ideas into CAD (Computer Aided Design). Programming has been training new students to work on code for swerve drive and creating a Wiki for reference. Operations has been working on our sponsor outreach and getting the team back into gear.
The T.E.S.T., formally known as Turtle Trials, stands for Team Experience and Skills Training. T.E.S.T. is a game designed to train students new to FRC. More specifically, it focuses on training students on strategy over complicated robots. This year’s game is called ZONED OUT, which is a game of controlling territories by scoring rings and orbs onto wooden pillars. This game is meant to create more opportunities for more students.
Our team retreat was at the Bakken Museum on October 30th. The main point of this retreat was to bond as a team through a shared experience, in which we talked about past seasons, team values, goal setting, difficult conversations, and team building. We got to experience the entirety of what the museum has to offer and had a wonderful time overall.
On October 31st, NoMythic celebrated Halloween by going to the Allergy-safe Halloween event at the Mall of America. Some of our students worked with our friends from the Minutebots (team 4536) to help kids drive our robots! It was a super fun event, and we got the chance to spark interest in STEM in young kids.
Last week, NoMythic flew back to Minnesota after our trip to Houston where we joined 450 teams from around the world for the FIRST Robotics World Championships. We had a long week of competitions, museum visits, Texas heat, and pure robotics fun. Everyone on the team worked hard and had a blast. We are so glad we had the opportunity to attend.
This year, we broke new ground! We did exceptionally well in our division and,for the first time in NoMythic’s history, we moved on to the quarterfinals! Our design work was recognized with the Imagery Award – another historical first for our team!
Everyone on NoMythic worked incredibly hard on this trip, and we’re so proud of each and every student and mentor who contributed their work and time at this event. Our drive team did an amazing job during matches and figuring out strategies for each match. Our scouting team spent long hours in the stands collecting data for our strategist and drive team to use. Our pit crew spent days working on and fixing the robot. The work put into this competition by each and every team member is phenomenal.
When our team wasn’t hard at work on robotics, we were having fun inside and outside the competition. We had the option to walk around the pits and stands talking to other teams and students at the competition. There were workshops offered by other teams on everything from Fundraising to Programming to Recruiting. Outside the convention center, we bonded as a team. We had a pizza party with two other Minnesota teams, and we played a team-wide game of ninja. On our last night in Houston, we had a bling fashion show and dance party. On Sunday, we visited the Houston Air and Space Museum, where we got to see cool rockets – including a FalconX and the Saturn V!
All in all, we had an incredible time in Houston at Champs. We had so much fun, learned so much, and grew as a team and as people. We’re knocking on wood that we have the chance to go again in 2023!
Team photo in front of the FIRST logoOur pit setup
NoMythic just went to Duluth for the Northern Lights regional competition. A lot happened, and we have some big news to share with you all.
First off, we would like to acknowledge all of the hard work from people in and outside the team. Our deepest gratitude goes out to our build team for designing and building the robot, our programming team for coding it, our ops crew for raising money and resources for it, our mentors for helping us achieve our goal and teaching us valuable lessons along the way, and our sponsors, friends, and families for funding and donating to the team.
Duluth was a long, hard, exhausting, fun, and incredible experience. Everyone on the team worked hard and was absolutely phenomenal at their job. Our pit crew worked each day on maintaining and improving our robot. Our drive team did an amazing job driving the robot each match. Our scouts spent long hours in the hot stands scouting robots to collect accurate data that our strategist used to create a list of teams we would want on our alliance during playoffs. All of our mentors were critical in our work as a team, working with our students to ensure that we had the resources to do our work well, and that we were in a good emotional state to do it. We are so incredibly proud of everyone on our team.
Our robot performed well in our qualification matches, and we were at twelfth rank by alliance selection. We were the alliance captains in an alliance with the Firebears and Full Metal Jackets, and together, we got to the quarterfinals in playoffs.
The awards ceremony was very eventful. Phoebe Kirchner, our team captain, won the well-deserved Dean’s list finalist award! She was recognized for her commitment to creating a welcoming team environment and culture. We are so incredibly proud of her, and we would like to thank her for her incredible amount of work done to the team and its culture.
We are delighted to say that NoMythic will be going to the FIRST robotics world championships in Houston, Texas this year. We were awarded the Engineering Inspiration award, which gives us the opportunity to go to worlds, with our entry fee paid for by NASA.
Though our entry fee is provided, we still have a lot of other things to account for as we prepare for our trip. Transportation, hotels and rooming, and food are all incredibly important things to consider, and all of the aforementioned cost money. All in all, we are expecting the trip will cost us around $15,000.
That’s why we’re asking for your help. Would you be willing to donate to the team to help us achieve our goal of going to worlds this year? Though the road ahead will be an exciting one, it will also be difficult as we work to gain money and supplies for our trip, and you can help us by providing us with money, food, or other in-kind donations. You can donate to us by way of the “donate” tab on our website, or through our GoFundMe set up for this purpose (https://tinyurl.com/NoMythic2491.) No donation is too small or too large, and any amount of support, monetary or otherwise, helps us immensely both in our goal to go to Houston this year and our larger goal to grow future generations of passionate problem solvers.
We are also looking for support from sponsor companies. If you have a potential company that could sponsor us, please don’t hesitate to email me (Joseph) at jsteinhauer@greatriverschool.org, Toby McAdams at tobymcadams@gmail.com, Michael Flood at mflood@greatriverschool.org, or the team email (2491nomythic@gmail.com) with the contact information for a representative of the company.
Again, we would like to thank you for your support of the team and its students, and we’re looking forward to telling you about our journey to world championships!
Us (middle) with our alliance: Full Metal Jackets (left) and the Firebears (right)
NoMythic just had its annual kickoff event, where we launched into build season and learned what we needed to know about the game this year. We decided to split this year’s kickoff into two parts, the first being on Saturday the 8th, and the second on the following Sunday.
We started off the day on Saturday by watching the kickoff video that explained the game. After that, we read over certain parts of the game manual to further understand the rules surrounding the game, field, and building requirements, and how you can score by shooting balls into different hoops or climbing up a set of bars (the higher it climbs, the more points your team gets,) and then met in small groups to talk about traits we would want for this season’s robot. Then, we played a game called the “Robot Paper Game” (or RPG) that allows players to build an imaginary robot that takes part in this season’s game to further understand the rules and what we want (and don’t want) for our robot this season.
On Sunday, we played another game of the RPG, then met as a team to talk about what we learned playing the Robot Paper Game and the strategies we gathered playing it. We then moved on to talking about what we want our robot this season to do, and decided that we want our robot to score high by focusing on climbing.
