A group of Cook County High School robotics teammates gathered in a crowd of hopeful teams watching the TV screen to see if their team would get selected to go into the final round of competition at the Duluth FIRST regional robotics competition. CCHS wasn’t selected by any of the leaders this year, but in the past, even the last place team has been picked to move on and compete with a leading team in the finals. Here Keenan Hingos (glasses) on the left, talks to David Blackburn (cap) during the selection process.
Cook County High School’s Ice Storm robotics team competed at the regional robotics competition held at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (DECC) over the course of four days, March 7-10, and although the team didn’t get the results it hoped for, the meet was a big success any way one wants to look at it.
With more than 4,000 students making up 123 teams coming from near and far, the competition 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.
The farthest any team came to attend the Duluth meet was from Sweden.
Internationally, Ice Storm was one of more than 3,600 teams from more than 20 countries— more than 90,000 kids— that participated this year in the FIRST robotics competitions.
Before the regional competition began, each team received a kit and a set of instructions telling them what the game involves. Teams had six weeks to build their robot with few resources and then they had to make sure their robot could do the prescribed tasks in competition.
Once the robot was finished, it was sealed up until the Thursday practice round. This year Ice Storm found out its robot was three pounds overweight on Thursday. To get the robot within the weight restrictions, the team had to take off the 20 pounds of climbing gear, which, when it was gone, left the team without a valuable piece of equipment designed to score a lot of points if at the end of the round the robot can climb a tower.
Then, during the Friday competition, something caused the robot to be hard to steer. In between the three-minute battles where teams are joined by two other teams to compete against an opposing alliance of three teams, Ice Storm’s top programmers would reprogram the ’bot, but the same thing happened several more times. Still, the team worked well together, said coach Tom Nelson and the experience was invaluable.
This year Ice Storm graduates a large group of senior leaders led by Joe James. Two years ago this group came within a whisker of making it to the national championships in Missouri. Next year the team will be young, but the talent coming back is there to go far, said coach Nelson.
While Cook County competes in only the FIRST regional tournament, many schools in the state participate in smaller offseason events throughout the summer and the fall, as well as gear up for the regional FIRST competition by holding practice events with other schools.
Duluth schools work with mentors from UMD’s Student Branch of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers program. Mentors play a big part of the CCHS program as well. CCHS maintenance director Tom Nelson coaches the team and this year Greg Pearson who also works in the maintenance department at the school, spent a lot of time helping the kids. Lori Backlund, the school’s financial officer who in a previous life was an automobile engineer, also came in to assist the kids, especially with the wiring of the robot.
Students who participate in the robotics program gain a bevy of skills. Not only is learning to work together a requirement, but each competitor gets exposed to welding, forming metal, grinding and cutting metal, building and assembling the robot, wiring a robot, programming the robot, and then learning to operate the robot, so it does what is necessary for the competition.
Making up this year’s Ice Storm team were David Blackburn, Connor Franks, Jack Fredrikson, Linnea Gesch, William (Billy) Hackett, Keenan Hingos, Adrian Howard-Larsen, Joseph (Joe) James, Andy Kern, Jessica MacCudden, Harvey Parker, Alize Pierre, Kestrel Pollock, Hailey Smith, JRonald (JRon) Tamanaha, Isak Terrill, John Vander Hedien, and Noah Works.
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