Hello, all!

This past October, NoMythic started our 2023-24 season! We finished our recruitment for this year, and our team now has 31 amazing students. Over the month of October and a bit of September, NoMythic has been very busy with events, tasks and building our team. Our team has hosted our annual team retreat where we went over team norms and culture. The retreat was perfect for us to welcome our new students onto the team, and bond as a team through bonfires, board games and team building exercises.

We also attended various events including the Harvest Fest at Great River School and the allergy free Halloween event at the Mall of America. At the Harvest fest, we introduced the world of robotics to the students and families from Great River School. The allergy free Halloween event is for kids with allergies who can’t just go out and trick or treat. At the Mall of America event, kids had a blast driving our robot, learning about robots, and meeting our team. 

We are all very excited for this coming up season, and we are already preparing for a small practice competition called the MINNE trials in the beginning of December. We are all looking forward to seeing what this new season brings!

Hello all!

We just got back from the 10,000 Lakes competition in Minneapolis, and we have some very exciting news to share: we are going to Worlds!!! That’s right, on April 18th, we’re leaving Minnesota for the World Championship in Houston. We are all very excited and just as busy, but first, we need to talk about everything that has happened in the past week.

The competition began with practice matches on Thursday. Just like in Duluth, we had our scouts talking to other teams and carefully watching robots compete, our pit crew making improvements and repairs on the robot, our drive team beautifully driving our bot, and our media crew documenting the whole experience. Unlike Duluth however, we had an entirely new robot, named Tyche! Just like Moira, Tyche is quite fast and maneuverable, but unlike Moira, it can score pieces anywhere, meaning more potential points. Many of Tyche’s parts were manufactured by Quality Tool and/or anodized purple by Twin City Plating, two of our amazing sponsors.

Qualification matches began on Friday, and we managed to perform quite well. Our drive team quickly mastered the new and more complicated robot, and our performance kept getting better and better as the day went on. After qualification matches finished up, we headed back to Avalon School for a team meeting as well as to eat and appreciate a meal from The Naughty Greek, another one of our lovely sponsors. 

Saturday started a bit late due to a blizzard the previous night, but we all managed to get to the competition thanks to team members giving each other rides, making sure everyone could get there safely. After a few more qualification matches, it was time for alliance selection, during which we got picked by the fourth seed alliance! Together with our alliance, we managed to do very well in the playoffs and placed third at the whole competition, a result we are all very proud of. After playoffs it was time for awards, which were easily the highlight for many of us. After great suspense and anticipation, they announced that our team has won the Impact Award! The Impact Award is the most prestigious award in First. It celebrates the team that has the greatest measurable impact on their members and the community around them, and the winner is invited to Worlds to compete against other teams. We all jumped up and screamed when we learned we had won, and we are now working very hard to get everything done in time.

One of those things to get done is fundraising. We need to raise around $25,000 dollars to get to and compete at Worlds, and we would absolutely love it if you could help us out! Our team is doing a GoFundMe to get us the money we need to help us continue our impact, and if you could support us at all we would appreciate it so much. $25,000 dollars is a lot, but any amount you can give will go a long way. 

We are also hosting an open house fundraiser on April 11th from 6:30 – 8:00 at GRS! We’ll also be hosting it virtually on our Youtube channel, NoMythic2491. Should you attend, you will get to learn more about the team, take a tour of our shop, and meet our team! We would love to see you there.

Overall, we had a very fun and successful competition, and we are greatly looking forward to what is next!

Hello all!

Last week, we went to the Northern Lights Competition in Duluth! It went quite well overall, and we certainly have a lot to report.

We left on Wednesday, bussing up to Duluth along with the Robettes. We had a wonderful meal provided by Nelson’s Cheese and Deli, one of our sponsors (thank you so much!) The next day, we mainly had practice matches. Our drive team performed amazingly, and our pit people never stopped diligently working on our robot, which we have named Moira. Our pit-scouts learned a lot about other teams, and our match scouts, who partnered with teams Ultraviolet and MPArors to gather scouting data, watched and learned from matches. Lastly, our media people captured some wonderful photos of the team and our robot, and our strategy team worked with our drive team and others to figure out our plans for matches.

On Friday, qualification matches started. Throughout the whole day, it showed that we certainly had one of the more unique robots on the field. We were very fast and maneuverable, decent at defense, and could very efficiently fill out hybrid nodes. In fact, we had the lightest and fastest robot at the tournament. Our whole team is certainly proud of Moira and its unique abilities. We managed to perform quite well, and at the end of the day, we were delighted when one of our mentors, Chris Ward, won the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award! We are so proud of him and so thankful for everything he has done for our team. 

On Saturday, after a few more hours of qualification matches, it was time for playoffs. While we did not make alliance captain, we did get selected by another team for playoffs, which we were all very excited about. Our alliance managed to win fifth place, a result we are all very happy with. We also won the Team Spirit award, reflecting our passion for our team and our lively attitude in the stands.

All in all, it was a very fun trip and a very fun competition. Our next steps are to discuss what we learned from it, and get ready for our next competition at 10,000 Lakes later this month. With only a few weeks to go, our team will be working harder than ever to make the best robot and the best team we can.

Hello everyone!

This January started off with kickoff and the beginning of our build season, which has been going strong since. Our build subteam has been working on prototyping various potential designs, CAD, and making important strategic decisions about our robot. Our programming subteam has been automating swerve, positioning via April tags, pneumatics, and a programming wiki. Our operations team has been planning events, deciding on our swag for this season, making an avatar for competitions, and meeting with sponsors both online and in-person. We have a goal of finishing up all of the physical parts of the robot by February 11th, our unofficial team bag day, and have made ourselves busy to achieve that goal! 

Happy new year! This Saturday and Sunday, our team had our annual kick-off. We learned the new game for this year! 

We started off the weekend by watching the FIRST Game Reveal Video, then went over the rule book for this season. After learning the rules and reading the rule book, we learned more about the game and strategized by talking about a  scouting form, field geometry, and playing our Robot Paper Game. We then came back together as a team to decide our strategy for this year. We also had fun throughout kickoff by watching the robot reveal video eating lunch together provided by our amazing sponsor The Naughty Greek restaurant, and overall bonding as a team. 

We would also like to thank Naughty Greek for lunch on Saturday, the food was very good and we all enjoyed it.