Twenty-six members of Ferradermis, the Whitewater High School FIRST Robotics Competition Team 6574, traveled to Duluth, Minnesota from February 26 through March 2 to compete in the Lake Superior Regional with 54 teams from North Dakota, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois, and came away as Event Winners, Double DECC-er Playoff Winners, Team Sustainability Award Winners, and the Woodie Flowers Award Finalist for the event!
The team’s 108-pound robot Chief of the Reef was led onto the field by Driver Andrew O’Toole, Operator Erison Dreksler, Human Player Jayden Kehrer, Technician Nina Heim, and Drive Coach Mark Zimmermann. This year’s game Reefscape is ocean-themed and requires the robot to remove large green playground balls (algae) from the “reef” and add pieces of PVC pipe (coral) in its place. Teams also can score by placing algae in the “barge” and doing a deep or shallow climb onto their “cage.” Throughout the weekend, one of the team’s tri-captains Emerson Dunham assisted the drive team with match strategy while Game Strategy Subteam Lead Rae Breisath and Head Scouts Andrew Zimmermann and Cyrus Hudec oversaw the collection of data in the stands. Ferradermis was part of a four-team scouting alliance organized by Team 6421 the WarriorBots from Muskego High School. Other teams helping us scout were Team 6381 Red Raider Robotics from Sheboygan North and Team 1714 MORE Robotics from St. Thomas More High School in Milwaukee. These same four teams plan to work together over spring break when all four will again be competing with and against each other at the Phantom Lakes Regional at Mukwonago High School. A large percentage of the team members took multiple hour-long scouting shifts over the weekend including Zoe Olson, Letty Trautman, Georgia Esch, Toby Kapfer, Preston Miller, Carson Miller, and Virginia Nelson.
Throughout the competition, Programming Subteam Lead Ace Hudec and Safety Captain Elora Wildermuth-Breitzman were key members of the pit crew, working on the robot between matches and keeping the pit clean and safe. Team members overseeing media roles included Cooper Housel who wore the team’s media badge for field-side access and Margaret Brown who filmed each match from the stands and provided footage for the drive team to analyze after each match. Videos were also used by Emilie Bruns each night to update the highlight reel playing on a screen in the pit.
The Impact Presentation Team of Maddison LaHaie, Chacha Binagi, and Sam Raupp donned their Hawaiian gear and used their creative surfboard displays to communicate with a team of judges about the things the team does in the community and across the state to raise awareness of STEM and help young people develop an interest and skills in science and technology. In addition to the specific judging session for Impact, teams of judges visit the pit throughout the event to talk with students. As a result of these conversations, Ferradermis was presented with the Team Sustainability Award sponsored by Dow. This award recognized the team’s efforts to sustain the team through long-term planning with the endowed fund being built at the Whitewater Community Foundation as well as help the environment through initiatives such as Project Preserve to recycle 3D printer filament waste for other teams.
Students are able to engage in many other activities during a robotics event, and several took the opportunity to be part of the team choir which performed the National Anthem on the Northern Lights field during Friday morning’s opening ceremonies and on the Lake Superior Field during Saturday morning’s opening ceremonies. Team members participating in the choir who rehearsed starting on Thursday afternoon were Nina Heim, Vivian Harris, Colby Long, Sam Raupp, Elora Wildermuth-Breitzman, Cyrus Hudec, Maddison LaHaie, Chacha Binagi, and Andrew Zimmermann.
Students had worked in advance of the event to develop a new iron-worker mascot costume for the team. (The team’s name Ferradermis translates to iron skin in Latin.) Students representing the team in the costumes were Asher Downs and Emilie Bruns.
Team mentors who traveled with the team took on many roles throughout the event. The team would like to thank Kat Dunham, Jake Raupp, Jacob Korf, and Quinn McKenzie for their help in the pit and the stands. A special thanks goes to mentor Tim O’Toole who pulled the team’s donated trailer from I-90 Enterprises to and from Duluth with the robot and pit supplies. The team would also like to give a shout-out to bus driver extraordinaire Bruce Parker from Nelson’s Bus who not only got us to and from the event safely but came to watch matches and cheer on the team. It was also great to see so many parents in the stands and so many community members cheering us on from home via the livestream. The team was especially excited to receive a video from Mrs. Wojtkunski’s class at Lincoln Elementary and to hear that the event was being streamed in many of the large group spaces at the high school on Friday.
The Woodie Flowers Award is presented to one mentor at each regional based on an essay students submit in advance. Team Advisor Laura Masbruch was named the 2025 Lake Superior Regional Woodie Flowers Award Finalist. The award is meant to celebrate mentors who, “lead, inspire, and empower their teams with integrity and Gracious Professionalism, embodying the values that Professor Woodie Flowers championed.” Woodie Flowers was an MIT professor who co-founded FIRST in 1989 with Dean Kamen. Woodie believed in, “competition for the sake not of destroying one another, but for the sake of bettering and improving both competitors as a result of the competition.” Woodie passed away a few years ago, but his spirit lives on through the gracious professionalism teams are asked to exhibit not only at events, but year-round. Woodie was a bit of a folk hero at events and would carry sharpies so students could sign his classic denim shirt. In his memory, Woodie Flowers Finalists are presented with a denim shirt signed by participants at that event. Masbruch now qualifies for the award at the FIRST Championships to be held in Houston in April.
During each trip, the team tries to incorporate an educational experience outside of robotics as well as some team bonding opportunities. In Duluth, this took the form of a visit to the Lake Superior Railroad Museum, a team dinner at Sammy’s Pizza, and bowling at Superior Lanes on Saturday evening after the event ended. On Friday evening, the team also had dinner together at the hotel followed by a presentation from the Impact Team and a strategy meeting to plan for the next day’s alliance selections.
Regional events consist of two phases – the qualification round and the elimination round. During qualifications on Friday and Saturday, Ferradermis played 9 matches with randomly assigned alliances, coming away with a 6-3 record. More importantly, the team accumulated an average of 3.33 ranking points over those 9 matches. An alliance of 3 robots can earn up to 6 ranking points in each match – 3 for a win, 1 for performance in the 15-second autonomous period as the beginning of a match, 1 for filling their reef with a specific amount of coral, and 1 for their climbs on the cages during the endgame. Ranking points are used to rank all teams, and Ferradermis concluded qualifications with a rank of 13 out of 54 teams. Chief of the Reef had demonstrated it was a solid scorer of coral, a master of the deep climb, and a very good defensive bot during qualifications.
At the end of qualifications, alliance selections are held for the elimination round. This begins with the #1 ranked team selecting their choice of teammates and continues until 8 full alliances of 3 robots each are formed. Ferradermis was honored to be invited to play on the #2 seeded playoff alliance led by Team 2847 The MegaHertz from Fairmont, Minnesota. The third member of our alliance was Team 6147 the Tonkabots from Mound, Minnesota. The alliance played very well together with Driver Andrew O’Toole putting on a defensive showcase that slowed down the opposing alliance while our two teammates continued to score. Playoffs are a double-elimination bracket, and the Ferradermis alliance lost their match in round four before coming back to win the best of 3 finals in 2 straight matches.
Under a new system put in place by FIRST for this season, this win does not automatically qualify the team for a trip to the Championships in Houston. However, Ferradermis is ranked highly in the world based on points earned this weekend and could potentially receive a bid to attend Championships as early as March 12.
The Lake Superior Regional is hosted in the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (the DECC) simultaneously with the Northern Lights Regional. The second regional hosted an additional 55 high school robotics teams from those same states but also Florida, Iowa, and South Dakota. After both regionals concluded, the winning alliances from the two events played off against each other for the “Double DECC-er” title. The Ferradermis alliance took on an alliance of Team 111 Wildstang from Arlington Heights, Illinois, Team 5253 Bigfork Backwoods Bots from Bigfork, Minnesota, and Team 2240 Brute Force from Denver, Colorado. In a tightly contested match, the Ferradermis alliance prevailed 153-145, claiming the Double DECC-er in what will likely be Ferradermis’ last trip to Duluth. Wisconsin is changing its competition model next year to an in-state system similar to high school athletics where a State Champion will be crowned. In June 2025, Wisconsin will host a test-run of the state championship format, inviting the top teams in the state (based on points earned during the season) to compete. With their point performance in Duluth, Ferradermis will likely earn a spot at that competition.
After a fantastic weekend with a 12-4 record, Ferradermis looks forward to two more regional events that are a little more local. The team will be at the Phantom Lakes Regional hosted at Mukwonago High School from March 27-29 and the Wisconsin Regional at State Fair Park in West Allis from April 3-6. These events are free and open to the public with the final two days of each event featuring matches that provide great fun family entertainment. Members of the school district’s FIRST Lego League and FIRST Tech Challenge Teams will be visiting the Milwaukee event during the practice day on April 4, and we invite the community to join us on the weekend as well.