On Saturday the North High Robotics Team, the Polar Technics participated in the John Deere League Championship tournament in Johnston, Iowa.  They competed against 28 other teams from central Iowa, and went into the contest seeded sixth after a very successful league tournament season.

After 37 matches during the competition (the team participated in 5 matches), they were ranked 3rd.  This ranking gave them the opportunity to select two teams to join them in the semi-finals.  During the semi-finals they played two out of three rounds and came out on top!  This moved them to the final round.  In the final round they were matched against the number one seed of the tournament.  In the first match, they won!  The second match was a grueling, and very close match, but they lost.  This left one final match to determine the winner of the tournament, and decide which team earned a ticket to the state competition.  At the beginning of the match it was close…then disaster, Fluffy (our robot) disconnected.  We lost and came in second.  But hey…second out of 29 is an amazing accomplishment, especially in robotics!  This is my seventh year coaching robotics, and it was definitely the most exciting, stressful, and rewarding tournament I’ve had the pleasure of coaching.

Winning the tournament in robotics is not the only way to earn a spot for the state competition, there are awards!  As the awards were handed out the team felt confident they had an awesome robot, and deserved a design award….and they got one!  They earned the Rockwell-Collins Innovate Award.  This award bought them a ticket to the state competition on March 4-5!

The following students did a fantastic job during the robot season, we wish them luck as they head for the state competition!

Trent Rover – Captain

Guy Payton

Reed Lam

Eric Niday

Ken Nguyen

Parker Swigert

Parker Jarrett

Colby Jensen

Bryan Butcher

Head Robotics Coach