Fifty-five teams. Two nights. Welcome to the North Lights Regional robotics competition.

On Thursday the sixth of March the robotics team left for regionals at the DECC Arena in Duluth. This was the first big competition of their season. The team drove two and a half hours to get to the tournament where they competed against teams from surrounding states, one team came all the way from Hawaii.

The teams were split up into two alliances, the red and the blue, to keep them all organized. Each team got three robots to work with. Each school team competed around five to eight times throughout the first round. The teams were scored from first to last, depending on how many points they had. In the final round, the teams that were ranked highest chose another team to be partners with.

Each alliance had one game piece, which was an exercise ball this year. The teams had to pass the ball to each other to get assists. The more assists the teams got, the more points the teams received. Once they got three assists, they had to be able to throw the ball into a low box, a high box, or over a truss, whch is a bar. If they can catch the ball over the truss they receive extra points.

Our team this year didn’t place very well according to Captain of the team, Marshall Mueller. But luckily this was only a “practice regional.” The team is making their adjustments for the second regional at the Mariucci Arena at the University of Minnesota. The World Championships is in April and the Minnesota State is in May. Even after the robotics season end Mueller said, “We do a lot of practice events, outreach, and training in the offseason.” We are confident with all their hard work that they can raise their placing at the University of Minnesota regionals.