The Becker FRC 4607 CIS robotics team is gearing up for their new season, set to begin next month.

 

Head Coach Alex Jurek has been working with his large contingent in organizing their department heads and team members. 

 

His delegation is also planning a full day today (Saturday) of training sessions at St. Cloud State University. The sessions, called Jumpstart, feature speakers from numerous area schools throughout the state who teach robotics members the many facets of FRC. 

 

Some of the facets include fabrication of the robot, pit organization and pit safety, parent education on FRC, creating a robotics booster club, robotics in the schools, finding sponsors, and many other topics.  

 

Jumpstart will be offering five sessions of training; Three before lunch and two after the lunch break. 

 

The Becker robotics team was first formed in 2013 and the membership and duties for each member has significantly increased over the years. Currently, there are three director groups that feature 13 departments.

 

The seven departments under Communications Director Logan Steffen, are digital media, journalism, networking, promotions, events, business and submissions. Communications organizes competition marketing scouting, oversees all things, operates and maintains website, compiles photos and videos, manages the team’s YouTube channel, constructs the robot reveal video, makes end-of-year summary video, compiles “yearbook”, updates team timeline and event pages, organizes volunteers, stays in contact with sponsors, handles thank you cards for all events and handles all other social media site management. 

 

Steffen has five to 10 students under his guidance.

 

The three departments under Operations Director Joel Wilson, are strategy, shop management and financial affairs. Operations decides and approves game  strategy, compiles a game test, scouts other robots, checks rule changes, designs pit layout, makes safety tests, takes care of any accidents, inventories the shop, organizes cleanup, checks in and out all tools, takes care of the financial statements, keeps a bill of materials spreadsheet of entire organization and helps directors of administration process orders.

 

Wilson has four to five members under his tutelage.

 

The three departments under Engineering Director Cooper Lindsey are technical, production and mechanical engineering. Engineering devises the optimal electrical component layout, constructs wiring schematics, mounts all electrical components, writes robot code, constructs the robot furnishes the pit, builds prototypes and provides CAD for all parts of the robot.

 

Lindsey has 15-20 students working under his leadership.

 

Jurek stresses that the robotics program is run by the students with the coaches and mentors being there to guide them.

 

“Access and opportunity are what we offer each student,” said Jurek. “We also tell them it’s okay to fail as long as they pick themselves up and correct the problem.”

 

The directors and leads of each department love this aspect of being part of the robotics team and they take their roles very seriously.

 

“It pushes us to work harder to figure out what we still have to do and how  we can handle things instead of having things handed to us every day,” said Lindsey.

 

“I like the limited supervision because it leaves  the team’s success or failure up to us,” said Evan Schmidt, in charge of safety, inventory and loss prevention.

 

“It let’s us be ourselves and come up with our own ideas and we feel better about ourselves when we solve problems on our own,’ said Steffen.

 

The Becker robotics team has amassed numerous awards in their four years of existence, including qualifying for world championships, regional championships, North Star regional rookie awards, runners-up at state, North Star regional’s chairman award, North Star regional Woodie Flowers award (coaches) and many more.

 

Over the years, the robotics team has pulled in numerous essential sponsors to their program who have helped out financially and with volunteering. This year, Vonco of Becker told Coach Jurek they’d like to become a partner in the team’s future and wanted to do something especially special for this year’s club.

 

Over the years, whenever Jurek’s team was getting ready to attend an event, they’d pile all their equipment, tools, computers, work cabinets and such into several pickup trucks for transport. Vonco — without Jurek or the team’s knowledge — decided to help out the best way they could.

 

Vonco donated a huge, 12-foot enclosed trailer to the team and also had the trailer vinyl-wrapped and lettered to show the accomplishments of the team, other sponsors and other partners. The graphics for the trailer were donated by Veit USA out of Rogers.

 

The kick-off for the season begins Jan. 7.