Greetings Iron Charger fans! Our teams are pleased to announce that they will be competing in their first in-person event of the season on Saturday, March 27th, 2021 in Fisher, MN. We are incredibly excited to showcase all of the hard work our new teams have put into their robots despite the many challenges that this unique school year has brought upon them. The event will be broadcast on the MN VEX Robotics YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/VEXMinnesota) as well as via Facebook Live from our team page.
The teams will be leaving the school at 6:00 AM the day of the event for Fisher. The event is currently scheduled to last until 5:00 PM, but will be subject to changes depending on how quickly matches progress. The Fisher school has graciously offered to provide a couple of pizzas to each team included with their entry fees due to their inability to offer concessions with the current COVID policies in place. School transportation will be stopping in Thief River Falls for dinner/snacks on the way back to the school. Thank you to everyone in the community who continues to support Iron Chargers Robotics! We will see you soon live from Fisher!
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Pictured above are members of the Iron Chargers robotics team with their robots. From left to right: Anthony Englund, Andrew Englund, Taylor McManus, Lila Alten, Chelsie Nelson, Janessa Torgerson, and Reece Sundberg. Not pictured: Tatum Carrlson and Clayton SuchoskiThis season for the Iron Chargers robotics team has been an uphill battle with COVID school closures, restrictions, and cancellations. Overall, our team members have done an excellent job pushing through unique challenges and testing their building and programming skills. Though practice time has come at a premium this season, our teams are still hopeful to be able to compete at a state qualifying event by the end of March. Currently, we are searching for a late-season tournament as the Minnesota State Robotics Tournament has been postponed until April 17th, 2021. The VEX Worlds Robotics Tournament will be held virtually this year and was also postponed until May 17th, 2021. In order to ensure the hard work and dedication of our robotics team does not go unnoticed by their peers and the community, we are also working on hosting a demonstration of the robots for Grygla School student body that would potentially be broadcast on the school’s Garden Valley TV channel. On a personal note from the team and coaches, we want to deeply thank our school, our parents, and our community for their continued support and flexibility during what can only be described as one of the most “unique” seasons the Iron Chargers robotics team has faced.
We have currently had 4 weeks of practice consisting of 2 nights each week. In this time we have spent our evenings tearing down last years robots and getting our robotics room back to "normal." We have started brainstorming ideas for what we want this year to look like. However, with the current situation with Covid-19, we are waiting for dates of scrimmages and competitions. We will update once we get this information.
We are looking forward to another great and successful year with the support of our great community and its members. The 4149 C team went to Theif River Falls last Saturday to compete in the Pioneers Robotics VRC Tournament at the Northland Community and Technical College. We did very well we got the Amaze Award which is presented to the team that has built a competition robot that clearly demonstrates overall quality including a solid mechanical design along with demonstrated design along with robot programming, robustness, strong performance, and consistency. We also had a record of 5-1-0 and placed 4th of 48 teams. Our first match winning 11-3. Second match being 26-5. Our third match losing 1-58. Winning 22-7 and 10-4 on our last qualifiers of the day. In our Quarter final match we lost 14-23. The 4149G team went to the Pioneers Robotics VRC Tournament at the Northland Community and Technical College. We had a record of 2-4-0 and placed 33rd of 48. First match winning 8-4. Second match losing 24-7. Third match winning 22-6. Fourth match losing 6-18. Fifth match losing 44-23. we were not pick for an alliance to go into the elimination rounds.
Last Friday our C Team packed up their bags and went down to Albany, Minnesota to compete in the Albany Tournament. With the tournament being on Saturday they rested up on the night before. They started off the day well, everyone was really excited for the tournament. They tied their first two games 7-7 for both games winning their third 16-11 and their fourth 11-6 losing their fifth and sixth 22-5 and 23-49 and winning their seventh 24-13. They made it into the elimination rounds being selected by the sixth ranked alliance captain and losing in the first round 13-15. Throughout the day their ranking was constantly changing from between fourth place to 21st place our final ranking being 14th place. We didn't get a state invite but we got the "Think Award" which is saying that they have a good programmer. Last Saturday our G Team headed to Fisher for their first tournament. The day started off good going 3-0 in their first three matches. They ended the day 4-4 and ranked 13th out of 34 teams. G Team was selected by the sixth place alliance captain and fell short in their first round of eliminations.
The Iron Chargers C team heads down to Council Bluffs, Iowa in two weeks to participate in the Vex Robotics National Championship. Sadly, our sister team, Iron Chargers G team, will only be attending to cheer us on and help us when needed rather than competing.
C team is very excited to be traveling to Iowa and feel honored to participate in this event. This will be the third consecutive year that the C team will be competing, even though the team is comprised of different members each year. We plan to update the website with pictures and keep up to date on our blog with our encounters and journey. To get more, and faster, updates please check out our Facebook Page. It's linked on our homepage as well as our Twitter. Our team went through multiple designs for our lift throughout the season. We started out with an Elevator lift with four stages. It went up to OT's head when fully extended. That design for our tournament in Albany, MN. We made to the Quarter Finals where we lost 16-12. We received the design award due to our detailed notebook and interesting and creative robot design. For our next tournament we decided to try our luck with a 'Danny Lift'. A 'Danny Lift' is what looks like one side of a double reverse four-bar. It relies on 2 motors and a very light game object, as the flimsy design isn't well supported. We mainly relied on using our robot for defense, as we couldn't get our lift to go up with the weight of our cap intake, or claw as we call it. We were selected for an alliance in the elimination rounds. We won our first Round of 16 match 15-11 and lost our second match 24-5. We received the Energy Award, because of our positive attitudes and good sportsmanship throughout the competition. The last tournament we attended before state was in Warren, MN. We had received our V5 equipment from Vex and had built a standard double reverse four-bar, again focusing on the caps instead of flags. We lost in the Quarter Finals 20-9 because our robot disconnected, as well as our inexperience with the V5 equipment.
State didn't go our way either. We had tweaked our double reverse four-bar so it was much more reliable and efficient. We added a flywheel that we used in 1 match. Our robot seemed to perform well on the first day of State, but we had complications throughout the second day. Our interview with the judges seemed to go very well and they were interested in a CAD design that Jake and Bailey worked together on doing. They enjoyed our view on this years game and how we wanted to tackle the scoring. We didn't make it past the Qualification rounds, but we stuck around to cheer on the other teams throughout the elimination rounds and awards. Our next stop is Council Bluffs, Iowa for the National tournament. Last Friday our two teams packed up their bags and headed on down to Albany, MN for the weekend. With the tournament taking place Saturday all day we rested up the night before. Team 4149G had a total of two first year teammates. The day started off fairly well. Team 4149C scored a total of 74 points during the skills event held all morning and up until the semi-final rounds. Our two teams seemed to swap between who was in first place and who wasn't throughout most of the day. By the time the qualification rounds were done team 4149C was in first with 4149G in third place. When choosing alliances just before the quarter-final rounds the C team decided to pick our G team. With a team from Tigeris-Machina as our third alliance partner we competed very well in the quarter-finals and the semi-finals. The three teams became well acquainted throughout the day as well. We went up against what was considered early as the "second alliance" in the finals. Our team ended up losing 2-1. Just for reaching the finals we had an immediate spot in the state tournament later in the season. The C team won the "Skills Award" for having the top score in the entire competition. The G team won the "Excellence Award" as well that day. Soon, we'll be heading on down to the state competition in January.
We're another week closer to our first tournament this season. Our teams are very hands on when it comes to working on the robots. Everyone gets in on the action. Here's Jake working in the metal shop. Our teams work with what they got. So, when a piece wasn't quite right he made sure it was useful. Chris is working on a future robot prototype. A forward thinker, for sure!
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