Students from around the world gathered at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville for the sixth FIRST Robotics Competition Rocket City Regional over the weekend.

“Fifty FRC teams competed in this event, around 1,000 students. We also held the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Explore Alabama Festival at this event with around 140 K-4th grade students,” FIRST in Alabama Program Delivery Partner Taylor Whisenant said. “Three teams from Brazil and one team from Mexico competed.”

The event, which the Rocket City Regional Planning Committee works year around to plan, required around 100 volunteers each day to successfully put on this event. Schools from at least eleven states also participated.

Multiple teams from Athens Renaissance School and the Limestone County Career Technical Center competed in the regional.

“ARS FRC Team 538, Renaissance Robotics competed at the regional with 16 students. Also, two other ARS students are members of the Limestone County Career Technical Center FRC Team 34, the Rockets,” Whisenant said. “Four ARS FLL Explore teams (totalling 24 students) competed in the Alabama Festival at this event.”

Whisenant believes her team played well.

“Individually, I think our team played really well and improved a lot since the FRC Magnolia Regional three weeks ago. However, you cannot win by yourself in FIRST. When you play matches, your team is randomly partnered with two other teams and plays as an alliance against another random alliance of three teams,” she said.

“In these 3v3 matches, you must constantly develop new strategies for gameplay since you always have new partners and opponents. We had some rough alliance groupings (e.g., lower performing robots, broken robots, robots that tipped over early in the match, missing robots) throughout the weekend that lowered our ranking,” she explained. “However, that is all part of the game!”

She went on to say, “the software used to generate the matches and alliances is called Matchmaker, and I have frequently told our students, ‘Matchmaker giveth, and Matchmaker taketh away.’ Matchmaker definitely did not do us any favors this weekend, but we still had fun and did our best.”

Conversely, FIRST Robotics Mentor Monica Hobson doesn’t feel her team did as well as they’d have liked in the robot competition.

“We did not do as well as we would have liked in the actual ‘robot competition’; however, we had a great turnout on that Friday (4/7) of middle school students who attended our “spirit bus field trip” who are interested in applying for the team in the future,” Hobson said. “Although we did not make it to the finals, we feel it was still a very successful competition.”

Both schools practiced extensively for the regional in the months leading up to the competition.

“During our official build season which starts the first Saturday in January, our team meets at a minimum from 8am-4pm on Saturdays, and every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 4-8pm until our last competition,” Hobson said. “We also have several meetings (1-2 per month) throughout ‘off season’ to prepare for build season. They are required to design, program, and build a robot to meet the game challenge (which is revealed the first Saturday in January) in 6 weeks.”

“The robot game for this season was revealed to the world on January 7, 2023. From then, we had until our first competition, the Magnolia Regional in March, to design, build, program, and test our robot,” Whisenant said. “During that window of time, our team met between 3 and 5 days a week for 3+ hours a meeting.”

During the meetings the teams would divide and conquer tasks.

“Some students worked on robot mechanisms, like our arm, wrist, and claw mechanisms. Some students worked on coding,” Whisenant said. “Some students worked on building plywood versions of the field elements so we could practice scoring in our workshop. Some students even worked on logo designs, a team scrapbook, safety plans, and more.”

Hobson’s team also worked to “market” themselves.

“They also must create presentations for judges, create giveaways and flyers to ‘market’ our team, create scouting scoring systems for competition based on this year’s game, and keep detailed documentation via media,” she said.

The team even created a student run website: http://www.team34rockets.com/

The ARS team used the Magnolia Regional as an opportunity to troubleshoot leading up to the Rocket City Regional.

“After the Magnolia Regional, with two weeks to go until the Rocket City Regional, our team members identified our strengths and weaknesses at that first competition and made goals for improvements before Rocket City,” Whisenant said. “Specifically, we made some design and coding changes to our scoring mechanisms and our student robot drivers took time to practice driving the robot and scoring game pieces.”

Both teams saw significant improvement throughout the season.

“I hope that my students feel proud of what they have accomplished this season. We had a better robot than we did as a rookie team last year. We doubled our team members. We improved so much just between the Magnolia Regional and Rocket City,” Whisenant said. “I hope that my students feel proud of all of the work they put in and that they have ideas for how to improve for next year based on what they saw from the other teams at the regional.”

“The Regional Competitions are where the students learn the most about FIRST robotics and about our team as a unit. We attended the St Louis Regional in March and then the Rocket City Regional in April. There was an obvious improvement in team camaraderie as well as our robot performance between the 2 regionals,” Hobson said.

Hobson and Whisenant both believe STEM education positively impact their students.

“This is my 19th season as a mentor for FRC Team 34 and the promotion of STEM. I cannot put into words the changes I have seen in numerous students over the years through this program,” Hobson said. “Approximately 85 percent of our Team 34 Alumni are involved in a STEM field….whether it be directly or indirectly. I am amazed at the impact that FIRST robotics has on our students in Athens City and Limestone County.”

“I hope that these experiences help my students see the real-world applications of STEM skills. I also hope that this helps students find interests and talents they may not have recognized before and helps them build confidence and self-efficacy,” Whisenant said.