On February 28th and March 1, 2025, our team was in Duluth competing at the Lake Superior regional. Going into the competition, we had high hopes but really no idea how it was going to go. We had spent much of the past couple of weeks trying to decrease the weight of our robot, as it was 14 pounds above the limit of 115 pounds. This process earned us the nickname for our robot, “Ozempic.” As we arrived in Duluth, we passed inspection at 115 pounds, which was the exact limit for robot weight.
During our first match on Friday morning, things went pretty well. We lost the match 70-40, but our two alliance partners were both immobile for the entire match, meaning we alone scored 40 points against three robots who together scored 70.
Unfortunately, our matches later that day were riddled with technical issues. In our second match, the limit switch was unplugged, meaning that our elevator didn’t work. In our third, our alignment has a bug and we miss half of our coral. Then, in our fourth match, we realized one of our swerve motors was disconnected from the CAN bus, meaning we can’t drive properly. We think we’ve fixed it, but the result in our fifth match shows we didn’t. After this, we ended up in dead last at the competition.
With 45 minutes until our next match, four students in the pits frantically replaced the motor after diagnosing the problem – something that required effectively rewiring the whole robot, one wire at a time, and taking apart a whole swerve drive before putting it back together. Miraculously, we make it to the field in time and finally have a good match, in which we finally win, placing 8 coral and missing 1. 
This result gave us good spirits at the end of Friday as we headed back to the hotel. That evening, we had the annual trip to Adventure Zone, which had an arcade, mini golf, laser tag, and more for the team to enjoy. As always, this was a great time for all and a great way to relax after a long day.
On Saturday morning, we had high hopes that our work the previous day would result in some good matches that we could use to convince the top teams that we were worth picking. Our first match that day went well, but we ended up losing by only 2 points. In our eighth match, a coral got stuck in our robot, so we had to play defense, though we thankfully won the match due to our alliance partners.
We entered our ninth match hopeful that we could impress our alliance partner, 1619, then ranked #1, but our Canivore broke, meaning we couldn’t drive. We ended up 51st and with a 2-7 record, and weren’t picked.
Overall, this competition was very difficult for our morale and while it didn’t go as we hoped, it was still an enjoyable experience and showcased the dedication and determination of our team. Our spirits remained high the whole time, and we came home having thoroughly enjoyed the experience despite the result.
Our hope now is that we can take what we learned in Duluth to achieve a better result at the 10,000 lakes regional at the end of March, and hopefully qualify for state once again, as we did last year.
(The Vanguard was designed to improve the consistency of the intake. The front section jammed halfway through qualification matches and prevented us from intaking. The best solution we could come up with before the next match was sawing off the offending section of the Vanguard. As the one who designed this mechanism, I will say it was not a fun decision to make).
(The joints of the climber have shattered and been replaced several times now. If we run with it, it is very likely it will fail during a climb and drop the robot onto the floor. We have since redesigned the climber to increase its strength, hopefully allowing us to climb more than once before breaking it).
We had another issue with encoders (sensors that tell us where our robot’s wheels are in relation to the field), causing it to be immensely difficult for our drivers to control the direction of the robot, but regardless we still cycled nicely. Despite these difficulties in our first few matches, we were coupled with some amazing partners and remained undefeated. 
scored as if they had happened after the time. When the match concluded, our alliance had been scored as 10 points behind our opponents. We quickly sent members of our alliance up to the question box, to ask judges to review the match and ensure that our points were scored correctly. The judges were able to see the jamming of the speaker scoring mechanism and adjusted our points accordingly. We were still defeated, but only by one point! Here we finished our qualification matches 8-1, ranking number 6 out of 55 teams. 
Well, we’ve partied hard but there is much work to be done- catch us at the Minnesota 10,000 Lakes regional in a couple short weeks, or at the Minnesota State Competition in early May!
