“I hate losing,” Jurek said later in the week, but he also felt that the alignment of the teams going into the final match gave the Becker squad a chance for victory.  Woodbury’s “Fighting Calculators” (Team 2175) had taken the rookie Becker team “under its wing” last year, Jurek said, when his team was part of the winning teams in both regional and state competition.

 

But all is fair in love and robotics, and this time the Woodbury team looked elsewhere for team partners, putting Becker in the unaccustomed position of having to draft other teams, rather than being drafted itself.  Though the Becker team has excellent scouting and marketing (captains Jacob Charbonneau and Emily Knudsen, respectively), putting a team together under pressure is not an easy task, all of the participants agreed.

 

Mechanical disaster to another alliance team spelled the end for the Becker team in the regional tournament, and an unexpected impact from an enemy robot caused a critical lack of function in “Gumdrop”, the BHS 2014 fighting robot.  The speed of the matches meant that the pit crew had little time to work on the machine until later in the day, hampering their ability to score.  The “human player” on the court, Cole Anderson, received good marks from his teammates, however.

 

In fact, prior to the ramming incident, the team had won three straight matches, dropping two in a row after the damage was done.  Doing the math in the stands, Charbonneau calmly informed the team that they “had to win all” of the remaining matches to make the finals.  And they did.

 

In the end, the combination of the perfidious Calculators, backed by the experienced teams from Irondale and Chanhassen, proved to be too much for the field.  The Becker alliance featured the teams from Rochester and St. Peter/Mankato/Crystal Lake in second place, with the alliance of Duluth Denfeld, Duluth East and Alexandria in third place and Greenbush-Middle River, Edina and Park of Cottage Grove in fourth place.

 

In the Large Group Meeting (LGM) the team held at BHS on Wednesday, it was agreed that the best outcome for the BHS team in the future is to continue to compete with the best possible teams, and to assist other area teams in developing their programs as much as possible.

 

Upcoming events include the BHS robotics open house on Wed., May 28 at 6 p.m., with the awards banquet to follow at 7 p.m.  The team will also be conducting their first Robot Camp June 16-18 at BHS.  The team will also be taking part in the Becker Freedom Days parade on June 21, and will compete in the tournament at the Minnesota State Fair later in the summer.