On Saturday, October 5th 2024, the Michigan Engineering Zone (MEZ) will host the inaugural Detroit City FRC Championship at Renaissance High School in Detroit. At this one-day offseason event, teams will get valuable practice for the upcoming season and compete for the title of Detroit City Champions.
All teams in Detroit and its enclaves (Highland Park and Hamtramck) are welcome to register, and anyone can sign up to volunteer. We have plenty of spots open, so if you’re interested in helping either with field setup on October 4th or during the event itself on the 5th, please consider signing up! Volunteer help will be instrumental to provide this great experience for Detroit teams. Food will be provided.
We currently have about 20 teams signed up, but have room for a few more. For more information, head to the event webpage. Any questions can be directed to me or @czb, or posted here. We’re very excited for the event and hope to see you there!
Too far out state to be a part of this, but I love the logo and the homage to The Spirit of Detroit. In fact, if shirts are for sale, I’d love to get a hold of one!
Leon and Rich, thank you for your support! We’re looking forward to seeing you there.
@Skipinator We’ve heard from a couple of other people who would like shirts as well, so we’ve created a pre-order form. We don’t have the design fully finalized quite yet but that will happen in the next few days. The front will primarily feature the logo and the back will feature sponsors, similar to many other FIRST-related shirts.
The event will start at 8 AM, with opening ceremonies at 9 AM and qualification matches starting immediately after. The full schedule is posted on the event webpage. Friday load-in will hopefully be possible; we are still working on confirming this.
Initial volunteer assignments will be sent out this Monday (September 23rd.) There’s still time to get a volunteer application in if you’re interested. In particular, we could use another 1-2 refs and scorekeepers. We could also use an experienced GA and/or MC.
The t-shirt order form remains open for another couple days. We will be placing the shirt order this week, at which point we’ll be happy to sell any extras we print, but can’t guarantee stock. The full t-shirt design is also posted; the front is the event logo and the back showcases our event sponsors. Thank you Ford, Aptiv, Bosch, and Detroit Public Schools Consolidated District!
Looking forward to seeing everyone in a couple weeks
For this event, we’re taking a mostly literal definition of the city, so unfortunately 862 would not qualify to compete. The only exceptions are that we’re including Highland Park and Hamtramck, which are fully-contained enclaves within Detroit’s city limits, and we’re allowing teams to qualify if they either go to school or build primarily within the city (this is relevant for a couple teams that commute from outside the city to within in order to build.)
That being said - belated congratulations for 862’s incredible performance at the 2024 MIDET event, both on and off the field.
Everyone, from anywhere, is welcome to attend or volunteer.
We have a couple updates with the event coming up Saturday, but first, a huge thank you to everyone who has supported the DCC so far. In addition to the competition itself, there are several initiatives taking place at the event, like the Tech Tigers food drive noted above and a few interactive booths. This wouldn’t have been possible without your help.
For those of you coming on Saturday or tuning into the livestream, here is the event schedule:
Some t-shirts will be available for purchase on-site for $20 cash (while supplies last).
Below is the almost-final team list. A couple changes are still possible but we anticipate either 24 or 25 robots taking the field. Barring drops, we will run a full 8-team bracket.
On behalf of the Michigan Engineering Zone, I want to share a huge thank you to everyone that volunteered, participated, or supported the event in any way. This was a team effort and we couldn’t have done it without you all.
The goal of the event was to have fun, take pride in the region, and most of all, to inspire further engagement with FIRST in the city.
We feel as though it was a success in this regard. This was the first-ever offseason event for more than 50% of the participating teams. We had dozens of first-time volunteers. And most importantly, we’ve heard from teams that they were motivated to spend more time working on their robots. This is exactly what we hoped to inspire with the inaugural event, what we believe will continue in the city of Detroit.
The Detroit City Championship will be an annual event. We learned a lot this year and we’re confident that next year’s edition will be even better. If you’re willing, please take a moment to share both what went well and what could be better in our feedback form so we can continue to improve the event.
Thank you again to everyone that made the event a success. The teams and volunteers were all incredible. Special thank you to Ford, Aptiv, and Bosch for making the event possible.
