This year, FIRST Wisconsin held its first competition using the District Model of Play at Lakeland University. Laser Robotics is proud to be a part of FIRST history by attending this event and competing in the Rebuilt game. This competition went very well and makes us proud for what is in store for our future.

Day one of the competition was load-in. A small group of students and mentors helped setup our pit, including some not from our team, shout-out to them! This season we had invested in a large moveable workstation to hold much of our tools in the build room and make it easy to bring them to a competition. This investment proved its worth as our pit was much more spacious than previous years’, and we did not need to pack nearly as much in the truck (thank you sponsors!). After load-in we participated in our first practice match, where Chaquerugh unfortunately disabled due to a fuel ball striking the breaker.

Day two was when the real matches began, but before they did, our business crew delivered our Impact Presentation to the judges. Unfortunately, our lead presenter, Finn, was unable to make it in time but luckily Dustin and Drew stepped up, gave the presentation and answered questions alongside Sammy. After that, our qualification matches were great! We had a strong record of wins and our robot, despite some issues, performed amazingly. These issues though gave a great showing of Gracious Professionalism as Team 2062 – CORE helped us fix and issue with a swerve module, and Team 930 – Mukwanago Bears gave us netting to improve our hopper.

Day three was the most eventful of the competition. Early in the day our business team began work on making more buttons for the hungry crowd of collectors as the supply we brought had run out. While working on this Team 3418 – RoboRiot presented us with their ‘Small but Mighty’ award for small teams that make a big impact at competitions. It was a great honor to recieve this but more was yet to come. As the qualification matches ended and the competition entered the playoffs, alliance selection began. We had put up a good fight, but we were not expecting to keep playing during the playoffs. However, our assumption was wrong as Team 3418 and Team 1675 – UPS had selected us for Alliance 6 of the playoffs! Our own Zach Harris stepped up onto the field and accepted their gracious offer, followed by Finn and Kayden, our lead scouter and drive coach respectively.

This competition was a lot of fun, and we were glad to work with so many teams during the course of it. We would like to thank our mentors, parents, coaches, and sponsors, as well as Teams 2062, 930, 3418, and 1675 for thier contributions to our team, our success, and to FIRST. See you in Mukwanago for our next competition!