Twilight Star Mini Regional

November 15, 2008

By Greg B.

Fourteen FRC teams from around Minnesota and points even further away gathered in a high-school cafeteria for an off-season competition event, the “Twilight Star Regional” hosted by Team 2220-Blue Twilight, Eagan. Each veteran team brought their 2008 competition robot for a replay of the FIRST “Overdrive” game. Lasting most of the day Saturday, with a team social on Friday night as well, the event gave the teams a chance to engage in some friendly competition before the next build season begins in January 3.

Even more than giving teams a chance to compete one last time before the stress of a new build season begins, off-season events such as this serve as a valuable teaching tool to introduce new teams and team members to the excitement of FIRST. In the Twilight Star Regional in particular, newly formed rookie teams were invited to shadow veteran FRC teams throughout the event, helping to give them a sense of what goes on during an often hard-to-visualize competition.

“Staging a pre-season mini-regional was the best stress I have ever felt,” said Devin M., captain of Team 2220-Blue Twilight. “There was so much to do to get ready for this event. We set this event up to help unite teams. I think this event helped a lot of new teams finally understand what is going on, they where able to see what a FIRST robotics robot can look like and see how much fun we can have. For veteran teams, I hope it was a good time to get their new team members to understand what their team was like and what it might feel like to compete as a team with one robot.”

“I had an unspeakable amount of fun at this event,” she continues. “I was able to announce for the event and really get into the game. It was not the feeling to be able to run our robot one last time, it was more of a moving feeling to show others what robotics was all about. We had many rookie teams and community members at the competition, watching our event. Each person that walked in with very little knowledge had the opportunity to walk out with too much knowledge in the end.”

The other big attractions during the mini-regional were presentations on the new FRC control system, the cRIO, by members of Team 1816-The Green Machine, Team 2220-Blue Twilight, and Team 2129-Ultraviolet. Since September, these three teams have combined efforts to thoroughly beta-test the new control system, which will be included in the 2009 kit of parts (for more on the cRIO, view the cRIO powerpoint presentation,watch the presentation, and visit the FIRST website.

Joining Blue Twilight were Team 1816-The Green Machine, Edina; Team 2129-Ultraviolet, Minneapolis Southwest; Team 2177-The Robettes, Visitation High School; Team 2264-Trojan Robotics, Wayzata; Team 2545- BAE High Jumps, Columbia Heights; Team 2479-Urban Supreme, Minneapolis North High School; Team 2574-RoboHuskie, St. Anthony Village; Team 876-Thunder Robotics, Hatton, North Dakota; Team 2472-RoboSapiens, Centennial Senior High; Team 2531-Hawks, Chaska; Team 2491-Rapids, Great River High School, Team 2518-Spartans, Simley High School; Team 2450-RaiderBots, Cretin-Derham Hall; and Team 2667-How ‘bout Dem Apples, Apple Valley High School.

A huge thanks to Team 2220-Blue Twilight all their hard work in making the event such a fun and productive time for all the teams that participated!