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Seasons

Want to see our growth over the years? While our team has been active since 2016 as a First Lego League Junior (Now known as Explore) and Challenge team, we started First Tech Challenge in 2023, the Centerstage season. We are now preparing for 2024's Into the Deep season. We will continue to update this section to provide season updates and history for past seasons.

2023 - Centerstage

Our Plan

The 2023-24 season was our first year as an FTC (First Tech Challenge) team. We had competed as an FLL (First Lego League) team for years before, but switching to FTC was challenging.

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We spent a lot of our time learning how to use the tools we had. Fortunately, we got access to a 3D printer that allowed us to create custom pieces, and we were able to order more specific pieces because of some of the amazing grants we received.

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We decided that in our transition year, it would make the most sense to use block coding as compared to Java. While Java would allow us to make more complicated code, it would take away a lot of the limited time that we had, so we decided to learn Java over the 2024 off-season.

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Finally, one of the main ideas we wanted to implement into our final robot design was the addition of an attachment that could complete one of the end game tasks of that season, which was launching a paper airplane. The airplane launcher was the piece that we worked on the most, adjusting it and working with the spring to make sure it was as accurate as possible.

We planned the 2023-24 season to be entirely dedicated to learning about FTC and gaining the experience we needed for future seasons, so when we managed to be selected for an alliance and moved on to state, we were entirely surprised. Despite this, we continued to develop our robot to give the FTC Missouri-Kansas competition our all.

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Our main goal before the state championship was to create an intake system that would allow us to collect the game element, pixels, and place them on the board with an extending arm, as that was the main way to score points during the driver-controlled period of the game, which is the longest part. We were able to create a fully functional intake system, however, the night before the competition, we double-checked the system, and it completely broke. There wasn't any visible damage, and considering how little time we had, we were forced to scrap the entire intake system and use the small claw we made for regionals.

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We didn't make it on to an alliance in state, which was expected, but the experience prepared us for later seasons.

Our Advancement

2024 - Into the Deep

Off Season

Unlike the 2023-24 season, where we spent our off-season relaxing after our participation in the FLL World Championship in Houston, we were prepared to make the most of our 2024-25 off-season.

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We worked to raise money through grants, sponsorships, and a Girl Scout badge workshop. We also worked on spreading our name by creating a website, working on social media posts, and going to the WICT Tech It Out event. This event allowed us to gain more sponsorship money and mentors. 

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Finally, some of our members spent the off-season learning how to code in Java, as we switched from block coding to JavaScript for the 2024-25 season.

Past Seasons

FIRST LEGO League Explore

  • 2016 - Creature Craze

  • 2017 - Aqua Adventure

FIRST LEGO League Challenge

  • 2018 - Into Orbit

  • 2019 - City Shaper

  • 2020 - RePlay

  • 2021 - Cargo Connect

  • 2022 - SuperPowered

FIRST Tech Challenge

  • 2023 - Centerstage

Awards

FIRST Tech Challenge
Centerstage (2023):

  • League - Winning Alliance-2nd Team Selected

  • League - 2nd Place Think Award

  • League - Advancement to MO/KS Championship

 

FIRST LEGO League Challenge

Cargo Connect (2021):

  • State - 1st Place Robot Performance Award

  • State - Advancement to Razorback Invitational

  • Qualifier - 1st Place Champions Award

  • Qualifier - 1st Place Robot Performance Award

Superpowered (2022):​

  • State - 1st Place Champions Award

  • State - 1st Place Robot Performance Award

  • State - Advancement to FIRST Championship

  • Qualifier - 1st Place Champions Award

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