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.