CLOQUET — Things looked pretty rough for the Ripsaw Robotics team over the summer. The team spent the past few years rebuilding after the pandemic and built up to nearly 15 seniors.
Senior driver Edward Stone was ready for this year. Then, the team learned their coach left for another district.
"Things kind of fell apart, but our team was able to keep going," Stone said. "We kept recruiting and did a lot of events over the summer to stay alive without coaches. Then we did our very best to convince our current coaches to join up."
The team approached career and technical education program instructors Michelle Wick and Dusty Rhoades.
Wick was hesitant to take it on. She also coaches track and doesn't have a history with robotics competitions. But thanks to the team's persistence, she decided if Rhoades would co-coach, she'd join, too.
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"It was a big learning thing for us," Wick said. "We were trying to figure out this whole robotics concept and we had to rely a lot on those seniors and students who understood how things run. It's so unlike any other competition."
But Wick said she and Rhoades were able to bring in their relevant experiences as business owners and construction educators to coach the team, along with a handful of adult and former student mentors to help along the way.
Wick and Rhoades also opened Cloquet's newly redesigned career and technology education lab spaces to the team.
"One of the major struggles with robotics is the fabrication and the costs of fabrication. And we just decided if we could do everything in-house, we would," Wick said. "Right down to the T-shirts — we printed those ourselves. We made our own banners, 3-D-printed guitar picks with our team number to give away to other teams."
Stone said access to the equipment and the drive to learn how to use everything available, from the computer-aided design to the computer numerical control machine.
"We had a strong base of kids who understood robotics, but not the manufacturing side of things," Stone said. "But we were willing to learn and recruit more team members from the tech classes, and I really think that made all the difference this year."
Stone credits the design of their robot, BeBop, to the team's success. The name denotes a style of music and was inspired by this year's FIRST robotics theme, "Crescendo," a musically based game.
"We had a sturdy robot that did one thing really well," Stone said. "We could just keep on scoring. It wasn't the most defensive robot, but we could score and other teams loved that, so it made us a valuable partner."
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The team also built a small practice field in the school basement and took advantage of a full-sized field in Duluth created by the Arrowhead Robotics Coalition whenever it was available to practice driving their bot.
"We have drivers who can drive fast," said Matthew Mangan, a freshman on the team. "We didn't have a lot of large moving pieces and so we were able to just zoom around."
"And it was easily fixable, too," added Josh Bleskacek, another team member. "We were able to use our CAD designs to fix anything quickly."
The team took fifth place in the Lake Superior Regional and qualified for the Minnesota State High School League state tournament in early May, a first trip to state for many of the seniors like Stone.
"I don't think we have any expectations going into state," Stone said. "We just want to perform well and embrace the experience. It's something we've never done before. It's our first trip, but it won't be our last."
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