Perham Robotics team headed to MSHSL Championship for 2nd consecutive year – Perham Focus

PERHAM

— Members of the Perham Robotics team, otherwise known as “Full Metal Jackets”, are gearing up for state competition as they prepare their creation, “Tempo,” for the big game.

Tempo is the name of the $20,000 robot that the students built from scratch, turning metal and parts into a piece of athletic technology that will now carry the team to the MSHSL Championship on Saturday, May 4, at Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus.

Thirty-six teams qualified to compete in the event, with the Full Metal Jackets being the 36th team to qualify for the competition. This is the second year in a row the Full Metal Jackets have qualified for the MSHSL Championship, which will be the team’s third competition of the season.

The road to the Full Metal Jackets’ second straight MSHSL Championship appearance has been a long one. Every year, the competition format for the season changes and the team must completely rebuild their robot for the new format. While they are allowed to reuse what they can from the previous year’s robot, they often need to buy new parts every year.

“It’s built from the corpse of its predecessors,” junior Ellie Cissell said. “We work a lot on fundraising. We get together and write letters and send them out. That’s a big thing.”

The team mostly focuses on fundraising during the first half of the school year. It isn’t until the first Saturday in January that the team can shift their focus to designing and building their robot. That’s when they learn what the season’s game will be, and they have until the first weekend of March to have the robot ready to compete.

The game for this year’s competition is “Crescendo.” In this game, three teams work together in an alliance to score points or “play notes” by throwing their “notes” — a ring-shaped projectile — into three different spots: “the amp,” about 1 foot from the carpet; “the speaker,” about 6 feet from the carpet; and “the stage’s trap,” where robots must lift themselves up a chain to reach about 5 feet from the ground. The team’s robot was built specifically to complete these tasks, with an adjustable top utilizing wheels to shoot the “notes.”

Contriubted / FIRST Robotics Competition

And while they don’t know what the game will be until early January, there are certain adjustments the team can make to their robot ahead of time, such as the drivetrain, since no matter what, the robot needs to be able to move around the arena.

This year, the team started in mid-November working on changing from a tank-style drivetrain to a swerve drive, which allows the robot to move around independently of rotation, similar to an office chair.

Senior Anthony Sazama, the main driver of the robot and a member of the build team, said that the switch from tank drive to swerve drive has been a huge improvement that makes his job easier.

Sazama enjoyed showing off the improved speed and agility of Tempo’s new drivetrain during the team’s interview with the Focus, zipping the robot around the team’s practice area at speeds up to 20 feet per second. That extra speed and agility has helped the team get to the MSHSL Championship.

Their first competition of the season was the Northern Lights Regional held in Duluth, where the team qualified to be the fourth captain after the qualifying round, which meant they picked other teams for their alliance rather than being picked by another team. Alliances are composed of three teams that play against each other in each round. The alliances are random in the qualifying round, then they are picked by captains for the playoff round. The Full Metal Jackets placed fifth in the playoffs at the Northern Lights Regional competition.

The team’s second competition of the season was the Granite City Regional. The Full Metal Jackets won the Team Spirit Award despite having one of the smaller teams in the competition. They also qualified to be the eighth captain following the qualifying round but were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

Robert Williams / Perham Focus

Members of the team gave credit to coach Andy Paulson for helping the students build the Full Metal Jackets into a serious contender over the past three years, and with his leadership, they believe they have pretty good odds of performing well in the MSHSL Championship.

Reid Starzl, a senior who handles scouting for the team, joined three years ago along with Paulson.

“Three years ago the team consisted of mostly seniors and then a couple ‘inbetweeners’ like me and Gary (Steeke),” Starzl said. “The next year all those seniors graduated and we basically started fresh.”

Senior Gary Steeke is the backup driver and the human player who feeds the robot “notes.” He expanded on how the team has grown since he joined, saying, “We had five people continue from the year before and 28 team members total.”

But now the team is in a much better position to keep growing, improving and moving forward. Steeke also mentioned that he plans to return as a mentor after he graduates to help ensure the team continues to improve.

Robert Williams / Perham Focus

Opening ceremonies for the May 4 MSHSL Championship begin at 8:15 a.m., and qualification matches begin at 8:30 a.m. After the qualifying round, the playoff matches will begin and run until about 5:45 p.m., after which the award ceremonies will begin. Admission is free.

To watch replays of the Full Metal Jackets competitions visit, frc-events.firstinspires.org/2024/team/3297.

Williams has worked as a reporter for the Perham Focus since April 2024. He has also worked at a newspaper in New Baltimore, Michigan, after graduating from Michigan State University in 2019.