[Nemo]

Congratulations to all of the teams that are moving onto the Championship from North Star. They all deserve to go, and I'm sure the students and mentors on those teams have all worked very hard to get to this point.

Thanks to the hard working volunteers who make North Star a great regional.

It was great to work with all of the teams we had a chance to interact with, including our allies in the elimination rounds. It would have been interesting to see what would happen in the finals had we made it; all of the robots were getting beat up by that point. Our robot wasn't running at full power anymore; we had a bound up gear box on one side of the arm and possibly some worn out batteries causing things to run hot; we were draining batteries faster and running with less juice in the second half of our matches. So we were more and more vulnerable to defense. I think the alliance partners also were also experiencing some mechanical issues to add to the fun. We also blew a gyro to give some fun behavior in autonomous until we replaced it. This is the type of thing that happens all the time in elimination rounds, and it can go both ways. We know that pretty well after last year's finals in which 3928 (top seed and best robot at the event) had mechanical issues. It was great to see neutrino earn their first trip to the Championship, especially given their tough exit last year.

It was nice to see assists awarded for herding at this regional. It allowed one of my favorite matches ever to happen in Qualifier 80. We lost a chain and became immobile after autonomous, but the alliance switched strategies to have the remaining robots do two assist herding cycles. Then at the end, our partners pushed the ball to our stationary robot for a 3 assist high goal to end the match.

North Star is a great regional, and hopefully we can make it back there to compete again. Best of luck to all of the teams that are competing in the FIRST Championship and the Minnesota State Championship!