Hello, all!

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!