A few weeks ago, a few of our team members and Height Differential (HD) had an idea about a Mounds View FTC scrimmage. We worked with HD to reserve space in our school’s common area and invite all of the FTC teams at Mounds View High School, as well as one from Chippewa Middle School. Since the State Championship was about two weeks away, the scrimmage was a great opportunity to run our robots as well as show our school what we’ve been doing.
Since Mounds View does not currently support FTC teams, a lot of the teachers didn’t know that their students were involved with it. It was great to have the opportunity to tell our teachers about the program and how it’s impacted us (as well as provide a visual explanation for why some of us are behind in our homework!). We ran several rounds and mixed up alliances to provide a somewhat accurate competition format, while still allowing time to make repairs or talk to visitors. The whole three hours were a fantastic way to see what needed to be fixed or changed on our robots before the competition.
This event provided a good way to connect with our high school and show off what we’ve been doing for the past several years. Even though our school has an FRC team, we think it’s important that they learn about and support FTC because there are so many successful teams that go unnoticed. We hope that this scrimmage effectively introduced the program to Mounds View and helped them understand why we work so hard on these teams outside of school hours.
