On Nov. 9, the Edina Robotics First Tech Challenge (FTC) teams met for a scrimmage hosted by Edina High School against two teams—Potential Energy from Mounds View High School and Aluminum Warriors from West Lutheran High School. They competed against the Edina teams Piece of Cake, Easy as π, and Since Sliced Bread to test out their robots in competition, make improvements, and get a first outlook on the season. Of the competing Edina teams, Piece of Cake won the scrimmage. 

Expectations varied across the team, with some expecting a win and others expecting the worst. First year team member and freshman Clark Milbert said he was worried when it was time to reveal the robots, since the Piece of Cake robot was not yet complete. “When I first saw some of the robots we invited from outside teams, just looking and seeing how they built their robot was completely different from ones we had previously seen,” Milbert said.

The competition was tense, with second-year team member and freshman Alexander Becker calling the scrimmage “neck and neck.” 

“We won every match against them but by one or two points. It was razor’s edge with them,” Becker said. 

While the team was worried about the difficulty of the scrimmage, first-year team member and freshman Kyle Simpson decided to take a different outlook on the experience. “There were moments when we knew that we needed to improve some things or fix something for the robot, we had the outlook of this is just a scrimmage. (The scrimmage) is not (a high) commitment level. We can use this as practice,” Simpson said.  

The team said they learned a lot from the opportunity to compete at the scrimmage, but still has a slough of improvements to be made to the robot. “This year [is going] pretty good. We might qualify for the state tournament but that’s not 100% set in stone,” Becker said.