On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, April 11th-13th, we competed in the FIRST Robotics Michigan State Championship. It was an intense competition as always, with 64 of the best Michigan teams competing for the champion’s medals. In the end, we did very well, making it into the quarter finals of the elimination matches along with teams 2000, TEAM ROCK, and 3656, the Dreadbots.

The Michigan State Championship was a great ending to an astonishing season of FIRST competitions in Michigan. Every team that was there performed to their fullest and the spirit was spectacular. There were some awesome mascots, from a dragon to a flash of lightning, and the noise of cheering was at one of the highest levels yet in this very exciting season. Match scores were high, with many over 200 and, in the first of two quarter-final matches which we lost, a point difference of only 1!

Congratulations are in order to teams 217,469, and 3539 for winning the elimination matches and becoming co-champions of the 2013 Michigan State Championship. They played some great Ultimate Ascent and will be 3 of the teams to watch come World Championships next week.

We are very happy to have made it as far as we did in such a rigorous competition, and will be hoping to place even better next week in St. Louis, even though doing so would mean getting past dozens of top-quality teams with some seriously well-designed robots. It’s no doubt that at Worlds we’ll see some superb shooting, crazy climbing and perhaps even some new high scores.

Our experience at States was made even better by an appearance by Michigan governor Rick Snyder, and by our winning of the Industrial Design Award sponsored by General Motors. It’s a nice recognition of the hard work that our design and build teams did in producing the robot.

As previously mentioned, we will be competing in the World Championships in St.Louis, Missouri this week from Thursday till Saturday. Watch for Persephone in the Galileo division, along with Michigan teams 27, 70, 2000, 2337, 2474, 2834, 3641 and 3656, and see team 3478, the LamBots, compete in Archimedes! Every member of our team is excited for the great competition ahead and we wish good luck to every team competing.

For a gallery of pictures from States, click here.

Co-written by Kait Whitfoot.

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