This weekend (February 17th), the Menacing Muffin Dragons attended the Second Chance Robotics Tournament in Philomath, Oregon. The team name was adored by the announcers, the other teams, and audience, the emcee actually had to pause and collect himself after reading the team name out loud – and this was during a competition with a lot of creative team names.
This tournament provided a last opportunity to qualify for the State Tournament for teams from around the State who didn’t quite make it during their league qualifying tournaments.
After winning all of their qualification rounds – including a tournament high 153 points with the first ranked team as their alliance partner, the Menacing Muffin Dragons were in second place going into Alliance selection.
The League that NKN Robotics participates in, called Silicon Forest, was an extremely competitive environment for teams this year. 5 teams from Silicon Forest made it to the finals at the Second chance tournament including the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 9th and 12th ranked teams out of 24 teams.
Alliance selection is the process where teams are chosen for the finals. MMD chose the 3rd place Dread Pirate Robots from Coos Bay and the 9th place Pac-Bots as their Alliance partners for the finals. MMD was particularly excited to partner with the Dread Pirates as they are a coastal team that shares our school mascot, and the robots and game strategies worked quite well together.
This was an extremely competitive Alliance that beat the 3rd alliance in the semi-finals, and won one of three finals matches against the first place Automated Skeletons and their alliance.
After some very competitive play during the first and second rounds of the finals MMD ended in second place in the tournament. The team came home with a 2nd place Innovate Award trophy, and a larger trophy for Finalist Alliance Team Captain.
They were very close to earning one of the four coveted tickets to the State Competition.
Two members of the Menacing Muffin Dragons Jay Johansen and Michael Troxel are graduating this Spring, and the remaining youngest members of the Menacing Muffin Dragons are excited to return next season armed with the experience and knowledge they gained this year.
In other news:
Karsten Johansen spent the weekend volunteering at the tournament for Team Argonauts who are headed to the State Tournament on March 9th and 10th. Volunteer work and promoting Robotics with the greater community are two major goals of FIRST competitions.
Last week NKN Robotics held an afterschool event to introduce 11 potential new members to Robotics. Called Robotics Bootcamp – the four day after school event taught an introduction to programming and building, and had all four teams competing on the performance field in a simplified version of the Centerstage game at the end of the week.
What a busy couple of weeks for NKN Robotics!
Upcoming dates of interest for Robotics:
Monday Feb 26th – Final meeting and celebration for all three teams!
March 9th and 10th – State Tournament at Liberty High School – come and cheer on the Argonauts!
Many thanks to NKN Robotics sponsors– Mudd-Nick Foundation, Eugene Schmuck Foundation, Tillamook County Creamery and ORTOP.
Many thanks to our coaches and mentors – Kathryn Harmon, James Johansen, Kirk Dickey, Evan Solley, David Hummel, and our tournament volunteer and mentor Katie Green.
Many thanks to the parents who attended Second Chance and cheered on our teams! #NKN56 #WeAreCTE