The North Shore Storm robotics team was thrilled to receive a check for $2,000 from the Grand Marais Lions Club. Bob Spry presented the check to the team on Thursday, Feb. 28. Pictured from L-R: Recko Helmerson-Skildum, Hailey Smith, Bob Spry, K-12 principal Megan Meyers, Brody Lacina, Cayden Zimmer, John Pierre, and in front RaeAnn Silence and Ryan Smith (orange). Staff photo/Brian Larsen
Anticipation is high for the 13-member I.S.D. 166 Ice Storm robotics team that left this past Wednesday for Duluth to compete in the largest robotics tournament in the country.
The regional competition is held at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (DECC) over the course of four days, March 7-10, drawing thousands of students and fans.
With more than 4,000 students making up 123 teams coming from near and far, the tournament in Duluth is the largest FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science & Technology) robotics competition housed in one building outside of the world competition championships.
In early January each robotics team received a kit of parts made up of motors, batteries, control system components, construction materials, and a mix of additional automation components—with limited instructions. Working with adult mentors, each team spent six weeks designing, building, programming, and testing their robot to meet the season’s engineering challenge.
This year Ice Storm had three new mentors helping them, Jonathan Hedstrom, Mike Duvall, and Greg Pierce.
Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST, describes his vision for the organization, “To transform our culture by creating the world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming scientists and technology leaders.”
Once Ice Storm finished making its robot, it was sealed up until the Thursday, March 7 practice round.
“The robot’s been bagged and tagged,” said coach Tom Nelson.
Teams have six weeks to build a robot that will perform a variety of tasks in competition.
This is the first year Ice Storm has participated in a pre-season competition. “A couple of weeks ago we traveled to Grand Rapids and competed against 17 teams,” Nelson said. “We probably got two hours of run time to see how our robot would do. Out of the 17 robots, we probably had the second best one.”
With no juniors or seniors on the team, Nelson said they are building for the future.
Competing this year are Ryan Smith, RaeAnn Silence, Emma Wolfe, Sky Robley, Olivia Nesgoda, Taylor DeBoer, John Vander Heiden, Hailey Smith, John Pierre, Kole Anderson, Brody Lacina, Haddon Taylor, and Recko Helmerson-Skildum.
Funding a robotics team doesn’t come cheap. “Since day one Arrowhead Electric has been our main sponsor,” said Nelson, adding, “This year Medtronics paid our $5,000 entry fee to the tournament.”
Large donations this year have come from the Cook County Education Foundation, $5,000; North Shore Collaborative, $2,000; Grand Marais Lions Club, $2,000; with lesser amounts given (but not insignificant in the least) by Grand Portage Tribal Council; Coldwell Banker; Crawford Excavating; Nesgoda Service; Grand Marais State Bank; North Shore Federal Credit Union; Joy & Company; Donna and Orvis Lunke, and some more financial contributions to come.
The team has also been given pizzas from Sven & Ole’s for Saturday workdays and materials from Cook County Home Center to help build the robot.
“We live in a great community that really takes care of its kids,” Nelson said.
Students who participate in the robotics program gain many useful skills. They learn to raise funds, promote their sport, work together, weld, form metal, grind and cut metal, build and assemble the robot, wire, program, and operate the robot.
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