On Thursday March 2nd, the Cannon Falls Robotics team was up bright and early for their trip to Duluth, to compete for the second time at the First Robotics Competition. The team arrived in Duluth around eight in the morning on Thursday. Then they went straight to work.

The first day was for practice and getting all of the bugs worked out of the robot. The real fun didn’t start until Friday, when the mayor of Duluth declared March 3rd of 2017, First Robotics Competition Day in Duluth. With that, the first round began and the robots were off to the races, collecting rotors, shooting balls, and climbing ropes, in hopes of pulling off a victory. Team 6217 (Cannon Falls) ranked 53rd in overall ranking points, was tied for 1st with rotor points, and took 12th for autonomous points. However, the team sadly didn’t get picked to go to finals, as the teams that were in finals didn’t look past their overall ranking points. This was a major let down, as the team had done very well, but they got stuck with small teams that couldn’t hold their own against the bigger teams. Overall though most of the team members are happy with the performance.

“I learned a lot,” stated Andrew Ayers, the game manager, at the team’s meeting the following Tuesday, “ we may not have made it to finals, but we can use what we learned this year to help us reach success next year.” Despite the shortcomings of the team, they have a bright future, especially since this is only their second year in the competition and they were ranked fairly high in points.