Maple River Robotics 7541

Maple River Robotics FIRST Team 7541 is a wholly-endorsed activity of Maple River High School, complete with Minnesota State High School League sanction. The team is comprised of students in grades 9 – 12 or ages 14-18, where members will learn skills, apply those skills, and pass on their knowledge to others.  We promote and support STEM education within the district.  We strive to create teamwork, innovation, and opportunities that will prepare students for success on and off the field.  With the guidance of adult mentors and volunteers, the team builds a robot to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Team 7541 is completely self-funded and supports itself by raising funds through corporate sponsorships as required of all FIRST teams. Tax-deductible donations to the team are accepted and greatly appreciated. 

A little history on our exciting 2022 build year:

The team spent 10 weeks designing, building and programming a robot to complete the tasks for this year's challenge.

The Maple River Robotics team #7541 competed in the 2022 FIRST Rapid React Iowa Regional competition in Cedar Falls Iowa, against 44 other teams from the upper Midwest, including Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois and Arkansas.  Qualification matches began on Friday and continued through noon on Saturday. The team finished qualifiers ranked 2nd with a record of 9-2-0. Two of the matches were won even though the odds were against them as they were playing 2 robots against 3 robots.

Alliance selections took place where the first-place team, chose Maple River Robotics #7541 to compete with them along with the WI-FIghterz #7848, Pontiac, IL. forming the 1st alliance.  Playoff matches continued through the afternoon with the 1st Alliance winning 6 of the 7 matches and became the 2022 FIRST Robotics Competition Iowa Regional winners.

Along with the first-place win, the Maple River Robotics team #7541 received the Innovation and Control award presented by the competition judges. This award celebrates an innovative control system or application of control components – electrical, mechanical or software – to provide unique machine functions. The team's robot has a unique climbing mechanism along with a vision-controlled shooting system which helped the team to win this award.

This win qualified the team to go to the FIRST Championships in Houston, Texas April 20-23.  The team had high hopes of finishing in the top 10 at the event, winning was just a pipe dream.  The FIRST Championships are an international event, as of the time of this writing teams from Turkey, Brazil, China, Australia, Canada, Mexico and Netherlands have already registered.  The experience was something the students will remember for a lifetime and still talk about it today!

We are hoping to build another winning robot and see how far we can get in 2025!