HOUSTON — Three high school robotics teams from rural Northern Minnesota will compete at the FIRST Championship, also known as Worlds, in Houston beginning Wednesday, April 16.
Pequot Lakes' Patriotics, Northeast Range/Ely's Iron Mosquitos and Warroad's F.R.E.D. (FIRST Robotics Engineering and Design) are three of around 600 teams from across the world that will participate in the competition, which ends Saturday. Last year, there were over 50,000 attendees from 50 different countries.
FIRST is a nonprofit that organizes one of the major school-age robotics competitions. FIRST teams compete in the Minnesota State High School League robotics state tournament.
Patriots and Iron Mosquitos students joined the KAXE Morning Show on Monday to share more about their activity and their upcoming trip to Texas.
How does a robotics competition work?
Northeast Range sophomore Eva Morgan said this year, she's been doing a bit of everything, including design, electrical and writing awards. Her teammate, junior Tuuli Koivisto, also does varied work.
"I do a lot of the electrical. I do a big part of scouting and strategy as well, and then I do a lot of the pit stuff when we're actually at competition," Koivisto shared.
Robotics competitions require a wide range of skills — both technical and social — and students from smaller teams often serve multiple roles.
Two sets of three teams, called alliances, compete against each other in two-and-a-half-minute matches. Robots are autonomous for the first 15 seconds and then are controlled by a driver for the rest of the match as teams complete tasks to earn points. The exact tasks change each year.
Every January, FIRST shares the season's game, with the six-week season beginning in late February. The 2025 game is REEFSCAPE, where teams "score coral, harvest algae and attach to the barge before time runs out."
"Alliances earn additional rewards for meeting specific scoring thresholds and for cooperating with their opponents," a news release from FIRST states. " ... Teams will use their engineering skills to strengthen one of the ocean's most diverse habitats and make waves to build a better world."
After the qualifying matches, where alliances are randomly assigned, the top eight teams get to pick their alliance members for playoffs.
"The scouting and strategy stuff I do is figuring out what team you want to pick and who you want on your alliance," Koivisto said.
Making it to Worlds
Some teams pre-qualify for Worlds, like those who won awards the previous year. The rest are merit-based qualifiers.
Minnesota teams can qualify based on their performance at Regional competitions. Captaining a winning alliance at a regional meet or being the first pick on the winning alliance gets you to Worlds, as well as winning the Engineering Inspiration Award or the FIRST Impact Award, which the nonprofit calls its most prestigious.
Warroad won the FIRST Impact Award at the Granite City Regional in early April. In their award submission, F.R.E.D. highlighted the widespread impact of team alumni, local outreach events, mentoring of other rural teams and mental health efforts.
"We may be based in a small town, but our influence stretches across borders, impacting students, teams, and communities near and far," the team's essay said.
"We are building more than just robots — we are building the leaders of the future, and ensuring that they have the emotional resilience and mental health support to thrive in every area of their lives."
But what about those that don't win the top awards? New this year is the Regional Pool, where teams are ranked based on points earned at competitions. Teams were invited to the FIRST Championship from the Regional Pool on a weekly basis, starting in Week Two.
"So even if you don't get first, you still have a chance to make it to Worlds if you still did really good in that event," said Pequot Lakes senior Brody Lawrence. "So that's kind of what we did."
Patriotics was one of the first teams to advance out of the Regional Pool, getting their Worlds invitation in Week Two. The Iron Mosquitos were invited in Week Six on April 7.
Building bonds
The students said friends and family were what drove them to join robotics.
Morgan's older sister was into robotics.
"And that kind of transferred on to me," Morgan said. "And now she's being a biomedical engineer, and I want to go into engineering."
Koivisto said she saw her older brother less and less as he got into robotics, as he only really came home to sleep.
"I never saw my brother. And so obviously I knew that [robotics] was really cool, and that I needed to spend my time there, too," she said. " ... Now he's going to be a mechanical engineer. I want to be a biomedical engineer."
Lawrence said he joined freshman year because of his friend Mason Jackson, who also joined the KAXE Morning Show.
"I joined because my brother was in it," Jackson said. "I wanted to be part of an activity with him for his senior year and my freshman year. So it was a good bonding experience with him."
Despite being hours apart, the Iron Mosquitos and Patriotics have competed against each other.
"You tend to go to the same Regionals, or you tend to go to the same off-season events," Koivisto said.
"The really great thing about robotics is that you cooperate with teams, and you're also competing. So you do a lot of communicating, and you're making friends all the time."
Spectators can stream the First Championship across various Twitch channels beginning Thursday. Visit the individual team pages linked above for match and division information.