The high school robotics off-season is in full swing, and twenty-one members of Ferradermis spent this past weekend competing at MROC, the Mukwonago Robotics Offseason Competition, held at Mukwonago High School on July 26 and 27. The event featured 26 robots that competed in the 2025 FIRST Robotics Competition season as well as a brand new robot from a new team at Edgewood High School that Ferradermis has been helping get started.
One of the great things about attending off-season events is the “extras” that the host teams are able to include in the schedule in terms of education, entertainment, and service. MROC kicked off with two hours of team workshops on Saturday morning. Twelve different workshops were hosted by representatives of 13 different teams, including a session presented by seniors Chacha Binagi, Erison Dreksler, and Margaret Brown on how Ferradermis uses the free tools of Basecamp, Canva, and pivot tables within Google Sheets to manage team communication, workflow, budgeting, team branding, and more. Other team members were able to attend 2 – 4 workshop sessions each on everything from fundraising and outreach to specific technologies used by other teams to build and control their robots.
Throughout the competition, the MROC Live desk provided commentary between matches. Both Margaret Brown and Chacha Binagi took a shift at the desk, sharing information about projects that Ferradermis is working on including 3D printer waste recycling and state level advocacy for robotics programming. Binagi was also given the opportunity to announce during the mentor matches where students fill all official field roles, including refereeing and drive coaching, while the adult mentors get to control the robots. Head Coach Mark Zimmermann and Engineering Mentor Quinn McKenzie took the controls for Ferradermis during their mentor match, while Programming Mentor Andy McKenzie and Team Administrator Laura Masbruch filled the roles of Technician and Human Player respectively. Erison Dreskler stepped in as Drive Coach. On Sunday, the students took to the field in Human Player matches, where they played in place of the robots. Jayden Kehrer, Chacha Binagi, Owen Taylor, and Mason Genung each participated in matches that stretched the limits of the students’ creativity in ways to score (or not score) during the match. A team social at the end of the day on Saturday gave teams the chance to get to know each other through soccer, oversized yard games, and some pretty serious dodgeball along with free ice cream sundaes.
The FIRST program emphasizes volunteerism and service, and many off-season events will include some sort of community service aspect. The MROC host team, Team 930 from Mukwonago, conducted a school supply drive as part of the event, and Ferradermis members donated enough supplies to contribute two full backpacks. Ferradermis is now working to collect new LEGO sets to be donated to Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee as part of a fall off-season competition in Muskego. If community members would like to contribute LEGO sets, they may be dropped off in the high school office after school starts or shipped directly to Laura Masbruch at Whitewater High School at 534 South Elizabeth Street.
Thoughout the competition, the Ferradermis robot, Chief of the Reef, was led onto the field by Driver Margaret Brown, Operator Erison Dreksler, Technician Ace Hudec, Human Player Jayden Kehrer, and Drive Coach Mark Zimmermann. Videographer Vivian Harris captured footage of each match for the drive team for immediate review after the match. Cooper Housel wore the team’s media badge and documented the team’s every move throughout the weekend.
Already having a great familiarity with most of the robots in the competition, Ferradermis opted to gather minimal scouting data, just enough to allow the new freshmen in attendance, Owen Taylor, Paxton Wilson, Mason Genung, and Wyatt Meyers, to get a feel for using the scouting tablets. Their scouting work was overseen by veteran members, including Rae Breisath, Elora Wildermuth-Breitzman, Asher Downs, Georgia Esch, Virginia Nelson, and Andrew Zimmermann, and mentor Kevin Housel.
Ferradermis played to a 7-3-1 record in their 11 qualification matches, ranking 5th out of 27 robots at the end of qualifications. Programming Subteam Lead Ace Hudec had been working closely with mentor Andy McKenzie and other members of the programming team including Emilie Bruns, Carson Miller, and Wyatt Meyers in the weeks leading up to MROC to construct the team’s first ever custom button board. The button board uses an Arduino and provides 24 buttons to send commands to the robot. Many of the buttons are positioned on the board to match the layout of the field and are used to tell the robot to access vision with the April Tags (similar to QR codes) on the field to automatically align itself to score in a particular position. The Design and Assembly Team, including Preston Miller, Vivian Harris, Owen Taylor, Mason Genung, and Paxton Wilson worked with mentor Quinn McKenzie to design and build the physical case to hold the button board. Even though the actual season is over, the team never stops experimenting and learning to make improvements to the robot, and the button board was a resounding success.
During alliance selections, Ferradermis moved up to become the Captain of the #4 seeded playoff alliance. Represented on the field by Scouting Specialist Rae Breisath, drive team representative Erison Dreksler, and new member Owen Taylor, Ferradermis invited Team 93, NEW Apple Corps from Appleton to join our alliance. Team 93 had been ranked 8th after qualifications so had the option to accept the invitation or decline and form their own alliance. They chose to accept the invitation from Ferradermis and the two teams then invited Appleton’s second robot, operating as team 9993, to fill out the alliance.
The alliance started off strong in the double-elimination playoffs, defeating the #5 seed 100-78. They then fell to the #1 seed and eventual champion alliance led by Team 1732 Hilltopper Robotics from Marquette University High School. In their third and final playoff match, the Ferradermis alliance lost a heartbreaker to the #7 seed, 63-43 when both Appleton robots died on the field in the early stages of the match, leaving the Ferradermis robot to score alone. As a result, the alliance finished their weekend in a tie for 5th place.
Nina Heim and Chacha Binagi were excited to host new WUSD Superintendent Samuel Karns when he visited on Sunday. They were able to watch some of our matches with him to explain this season’s game as well as provide a tour of the pits where teams work on their robots.
The team would like to give a shout-out to mentors Tori Breisath, Kevin Housel, and Kat Dunham for supporting them in the stands throughout the event and to Tori for transporting the robot and equipment. FIRST Robotics Competitions are run entirely by volunteers, and at this event Laura Masbruch was able to serve as a queuer while team parent and WUSD Robotics Booster Club Member Alan Trautman served as a judge.
The team will again be open to new members starting at our annual parent meeting scheduled for Wednesday, September 17, at 6:00 pm, in the Whitewater High School library. All parents of new and veteran members should plan to attend this meeting. The team is open to any current Whitewater High School student as well as home-schooled students residing within the physical boundaries of the school district. Parents of students in grades 4 – 12 can learn about the entirety of the robotics program in the WUSD during the back-to-school registration event at Whitewater High School on August 5.