A rookie team in the toughest league in Minnesota. A rough middle. A strong finish. A future.
Eight freshmen walked into our robotics room in September. None of them had ever competed in FTC before — and they were sharing the room with two seasoned teams doing things that, from across the bench, looked like magic.
They could have played it safe. They didn't. Partway through the season they took a swing — a real redesign of their robot, the kind of ambitious move you rarely see from a rookie team. It pushed them hard, and for a stretch it cost them: one weekend they went 0–5.
Here's the part that matters. They didn't fold. They kept building, kept tuning, and kept getting better — week over week, right through the end of the season. Their scoring climbed, their autonomous program went from nothing to a real asset, and they finished in the top half of all Minnesota rookie teams.
For eight first-year freshmen who challenged themselves instead of coasting, that's a fantastic first season. And all eight are back next year.
This team didn't settle for a starter robot. Partway through the season they took on a redesign — an ambitious move for rookies — and kept building on it. By tournament time, it could do all the things the game asks for: score in two places, climb, and run autonomously.
Their coder, working on it match after match, got the autonomous routine to about a 95% success rate by tournament time. By Meet 3, they were averaging 18 points in autonomous mode — up from zero in their very first match.
Toward the end of the match, robots can earn bonus points by lifting themselves off the floor onto a bar. Their robot can do this — something that's not at all guaranteed for a rookie team.
A small piece they added to help make their scoring more consistent. Not flashy, but the kind of detail that tells you a team is thinking.
Their CAD parts were machined on the CNC by the 4650 students. The 5713 sophomores helped them with their wiring. The room is built for that.
| Stage | Result |
|---|---|
| Meet 1 | #6 in league · 3–2 (solid start) |
| Meet 2 | 0–5 — dropped to #14 of 17 |
| Meet 3 | 3–2 comeback · climbed back to #12 |
| Auto growth | 0 points → 18 avg over the season |
| Driver-control growth | 27 → 50 avg over the season |
| Total scoring growth | +78% across the season |
| MN rookie comparison | Top half of all 26 rookie teams in the state |
| Best match | 84 points (tournament) — personal best |
What's special about this team isn't a single student. It's the group. All eight return next year. They'll be sophomores when they start the 2026–27 season. They'll be juniors the year after, with two full seasons of experience together. Their senior year, they'll be the team that knows the program better than anyone. This kind of continuity is what builds depth. You can't fake it. You can only let it happen, year after year, as kids stay.
A few small things from this year that say a lot about who these kids are:
Year one is for figuring out what you don't know yet. They figured out a lot.
The rookie team's costs are similar to the other two — chassis, motors, control hubs, sensors, and the parts that get used and replaced — but with the added challenge of building a base robot from scratch for a brand-new roster.
Gifts to the program help us keep funding a true rookie team. Without it, freshmen with no FTC experience have nowhere to start.