Team 5098, aka STING-R, is the FIRST Robotics team at North Kansas City High School. This year, STING-R was a Rookie Team, meaning this was our first year competing in FIRST Robotics. Our team built a robot in the 45 day build season, designed to assist and defend other robots. As we prepared for Greater Kansas City Regionals, the team worked on the robot, created the pit area, (the area in which we repair and build the robot at competitions), creating team buttons to pass out, etc.

Our mentors, Dennis O’Connell, Louis Breinin, Scott McKenzie, and James Krouse, among others, attended the Greater Kansas City Regionals with us, and helped us along the way with anything we needed. As we went to the Greater Kansas City Regionals, we competed against 58 other teams from around the Midwest, including schools from North Kansas City School District, including Staley, Winnetonka, and Oak Park, who were also rookie teams.

In the end of the regionals, we placed 50th with a record of 3-8-0, also winning the Rookie All-Star award which let us compete in the FRC World Championships in St. Louis, MO. The team was absolutely ecstatic as we all marched down from the stands to high-five all the judges and accept our award.

We immediately had to ship our robot to St. Louis and begin preparing for World Championships. We made almost 2000 buttons to pass out, recreated our team shirts, and continued to think of strategies that would give us an upper hand.

As the time came for us to travel to St. Louis, we packed up our tools and equipment needed in a U-Haul and drove 4 hours to the Edward-Jones Dome, where we set up our pit and unpacked our robot. The next day, we came back and it was competition time. We scouted other teams for information on their robot, played 5 matches, and added modifications to our robot. Then we left for the night and stayed at the Parkway Hotel.

The next day, Saturday, we came in and got right back at it. We ended up having a final record of 5-5-0, coming in 58th out of 100 competitors in our division, the Galileo Division. We watched as the finalists from our division battled to move up to the Einstein Division, where the top teams from the Galileo, Archimedes, Curie, and Newton Divisions got ready for the World Finals.

As the final four teams battled it out, between games Will.I.Am performed the song”Hall of Fame,” and changed lyrics to fit the FRC Competition. In the final match, teams 1678, 1640, and 1114 were on the Red Alliance and teams 469, 2848, and 254 were on the Blue Alliance. The game was intense, because both teams were tied for the win, but the Blue Alliance from the Curie Division came out victorious, 280-250.