The Herd places first at the Lake Superior FIRST Robotics Competition

Submitted by Bailey Aanenson

Bailey Aanenson, Freelance Writer
March 3, 2015

The West Fargo Robotics Team, The Herd, made up of students from both West Fargo and Sheyenne, placed first in the FIRST Robotics regional competition held in Duluth, MN over the weekend. In the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) teams are given a unique challenge each year and given a six week build season to complete that task. The Herd is just one out of three teams in North Dakota but FIRST Robotics is well known in Minnesota where there are over 190 active teams.

Grace Bailey, a junior at West Fargo High School and team president, views the experience of being a part of FIRST Robotics as a building block for her future.

“FIRST is a way for me to explore my future career by working with engineers from around our community,” Bailey said.

Teams compete at regional competitions where they face off against other robots in hopes of making it to the world championship in St. Louis. This year’s challenge was Recycle Rush, where teams were given the challenge to stack totes up to six high, with a round recycling bin on top, and proceed to place those stacks on a raised platform. Bonus points were given for “recycling” pool noodles or throwing them into designated areas.

The student-led team is supported by a group of volunteer mentors from the community offering technical assistance throughout the design, build processes and during the competition. Lee Johnson is the lead engineering mentor for the team.

“Our preparation for the event was very thorough, not only on the robot but on the image and brand of our team,” Johnson said “When we arrived at the event and other teams saw our well executed robot design and professional pit design, it created incredible attention and very high expectations.”

Through partnering with local community sponsors The Herd raised around $39,000 and spent hundreds of hours building their stacking machine. Bailey Aanenson, a senior at West Fargo High School and the marketing team captain, recalls problems which did come up every now and then. Through these experiences students learned trouble shooting and cooperation skills.

“Fitting in our robot’s weight was a definite struggle since we had to drop 40 pounds to fit in the 120 pound limit,” Aanenson said.“There’s a lot of time and money invested in this program and [we] have only our community to thank for the support they have given us.”

Upon arrival in Duluth, the practice matches were tough with technical issues that plagued the team. With a lot of hard work the students got the robot up and running, but unfortunately not in time to save their ranking.

“After our practice [and] qualifying rounds, I was feeling a bit nervous that our team wouldn’t advance to eliminations,” Aanenson said. “Our robot wasn’t showing its full ability until the last couple of rounds.”

The Herd finished the qualification round ranked 62 out of 63. After qualifications, the top 8 ranked teams were brought out to make the three-team alliances that would cut the number of teams by over half. The Herd anxiously watched as their competitors lined up. It is typical for the top-ranked teams to ally with each other. But that wasn’t the case this time. West Fargo was selected third before numerous of other top 8 teams and the rest of the 59 teams that were ranked above.

“I knew the other teams were watching our progress and I expected to be selected by another team, but had no idea we would be sought after by so many teams and be selected third,” Johnson said.

After selection The Herd met with their alliance partners and talked strategy . Their role was to stack totes five high and their partners would top off the stacks with the recycling bins. With this plan the team soon advanced to the semi-finals and then to the finals. In the finals the winner was determined by best two out of three matches. The Herd won the first match by one point and the second match by two points after some last second scoring moves.

“There was just this rush of excitement from everyone on the team because we realized that all of our work and everything that we had ever struggled with brought us to this moment” Aanenson said.

This close win qualifies the team to attend the world championship in St. Louis MO in April. The Herd will be the first FRC Team to ever represent North Dakota at the world championship. A fact which Chris Garty, the team marketing mentor, feels will change for the better in time.

“I hope we can encourage the growth of FIRST within Fargo and around North Dakota, so that North Dakota can have more than just three teams attending regionals in the near future,” Garty said.

While it is only the team going to St. Louis we know that we have a whole community supporting us back home.

The Herd students and mentors are available for media interviews. For any questions regarding this release or to arrange an interview, please contact Bailey Joy Aanenson ([email protected] – 701.866.9726). Additional information, photos, and videos can be found on our website at http://www.wfrobotics.org/.