Minne Mini Wrap-Up

FRC Team 3313 Mechatronics competed at the Minne Mini-Regional last Saturday. It was a super fun day filled with friends, robots, and laughs.

The drive team of Bryce, Brooklyn, Tyler, and Bydlon did a good job with the robot! We even got some matches of 3 runs (collecting 4 Frisbees). We had never done that in a match before!! Team 3313 finished qualifying with a record of 4-3 and in 13th place. Some other highlights: Tyler making a 5 point Frisbee throw (!!), Bryce's incredible driving skills, and our cheering section being the loudest section.

Alliance selection was next. As a complete surprise, Lacey asked Bryce to the JHS Sadie Hawkins Dance during Alliance Selection. It was super funny! We got selected by the 3rd seeded alliance of 2232 Deus Ex Machina, 879 Thunder Robotics, and 2846 FireBears. Unfortunately, the sheer scoring power of 2175 and 2169 beat our alliance in the semi finals.

FRC Team 3313 did not go home empty handed however. We won the "Team Inspiration" Award. That award goes out to the team with the most spirit, consist image, and positive attitude. That basically describes us. Ha!

Before matches started, our team did some presentations on Social Media, Scouting, Design Process, and Pneumatics. All presenters did a wonderful job!

Andrew and Carson designed a new banner for our pit or our cheering section. It was basically a test but it looked AWESOME (see picture above). Now that we know it works, we can make new banners for our pit for each competition.

Other random highlights: eating lunch crammed in a locker bay, Tyler trying to ask Bryce to Sadie Hawkins Dance, random little kids asking to see our mascot, having a bunch of people in the Sprinter Van while we waited for the keys, basically, just being with our team.

For real though, the best part of the Minne Mini was seeing other FIRST Robotics teams that we have gotten to know well in the last year. Teams like 3184 Blaze, 2175 The Fighting Calculators, 2052 KnightKrawler, 3883 Data Bits, 2512 Daredevils, 2846 FireBears, and A TON of other people. FIRST Robotics is so cool because it's robots competing but it's even more cool because of the community that is formed.

This particular competition was bittersweet. It was the last time we will ever compete with our Frisbee shooting robot so that's sad. But, it will be nice to have a new robot and new game and new strategy and new everything. We have competed with our Frisbee shooting robot on 6 different occasions now. It's time for a fresh start. The competitions this coming year are going to be super tough. We cannot wait for both the Duluth Regionals and Twin Cities Regionals.

Thank you so much to FRC Team 2169 King Tec for hosting such a great event and all the volunteers who helped make it happen. It was a great learning experience and a lot of fun.

See you at Kickoff!!!!!!!