WE DID THE IMPOSSIBLE!

4/1/26 - Minnesota North Star Regional 

We are the Northern Knights! 

A robotics team that competes at a national level in FIRST Robotics. "FIRST is the world’s leading youth robotics community, delivering hands-on STEM learning that inspires innovation, builds confidence, and prepares kids for life…” We are a part of one of their many programs called FRC, which stands for FIRST Robotics Competition. After FIRST announced the game this year, our team built a robot from scratch, based on the strategy presented. The tasks are related to a real-world problem that we aim to solve. This time, we were tasked with building a robot capable of in-taking balls (also called fuel) in large quantities, and shooting them from our robot and landing them into a hopper in the center of the field to score points. Our team is the ONLY FRC TEAM IN THE STATE OF ALASKA that competes at this level. We have a team of 9 people, who represent 6 high schools in the Mat-Su Valley and Anchorage. We just returned from a regional qualifying competition in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We competed among 47 other teams from the US, the Czech Republic, Japan, and China. Our team has been eager to compete at this level ever since we all started in FIRST robotics at the lower levels, FLL (FIRST Lego League) and FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge). 

The thing that motivated us to compete at this level really was the ambition of our team captain, Isaac. He has always had a dream to start an FRC team from Alaska and to compete at this level. It is Isaac’s senior year, and our team worked tirelessly over the course of multiple months to make his dream come true and to prove to ourselves that we could do it. However, going into this regional, we knew that we were the underdogs. This season is our rookie season, and none of us, except Isaac, has ever competed at this level before. With the help of our amazing spocsors, we built a robot that both met our objective task and was also able to be adapted to our strategy and the game for this year. 

We arrived in Minnesota on Tuesday, April 2nd, and hit the ground running, testing and looking at the field. Our team ended up pivoting our robot strategy due to complications and became a defense robot that was able to aid our alliance partners, with whom we are paired in every match, to win. We were chosen to be a part of the number one alliance by team 2052, Knight Krawlers, in the semi-final and final matches. This allowed us to be a part of the winning alliance and win the whole regional competition. This accomplishment has never been achieved before by a team in Alaska, especially not by a rookie team. In the entire history of FIRST in Alaska, no team has reached this level. We have done the impossible and are now competing in the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP in Houston, Texas, at the end of April. Teams will travel from around the world, and we are honored to represent the state of Alaska. In the words of our coach, Tanya Black, after we qualified for the championships, “You guys have done the impossible! I am so proud of each and every one of you…” 

Thank you to our incredible community and sponsors for your outstanding support. Together, we will continue to make Alaska proud!

Photo Credit: C.F. Photography 

WORLDS CHAMPIONSHIPS 2026

4/19/26 - 5/2/26: World Championships 2026, Houston Texas 

We got the amazing opportunity to compete on the WORLD FIRST Robotics stage in the 2026 Rebuilt FRC Championships. This was a huge honor, seeing as a rookie FRC team from Alaska has never made it that far before, and it has been a long time since a team, maybe even ever, that has made it, period. We attended this competition knowing that we were just going to "have fun" and learn a lot, which we did both of. 

Throughout the competition, we made sure to meet all of the teams in our division (which was Milstien), and we made it sure to tell them our story. We hung out with team 2052 KnighKrawler, who helped us win at Rengionals, along with Stateline Robotics, team 4655. They were so helpful, asking us all of the time if we needed anything from parts, mentors, and they were just able to answer our general questions. Everyone we talked to was so happy to see us there, and that we were representing Alaska as the only team in the state. The judges were super impressed by us working with our limited resources and achieving such success, seeing as we built our robot in our team captain's basement. 

We came in, overall, 75th out of 95 teams, which is not the worst score in the world! We, even if we did not win, were so honored to be able to represent our great state of Alaska, and we got to attend Eintien and watch the best teams in the world compete. In the end, we had so much fun because just getting there was a win, and we will take the things that we learned and pass them along to the future Alaska FRC teams. 

Thank you so much to the FIRST Community, our amazing mentors and coaches, and the State of Alaska for your generous support. We could not be where we are now without all of you. And thank you to Governor Mike Dunleavy, along with Mayor Edna DeVries, for recognizing our success; we hope that we made Alaska proud. 

NORTH TO THE FUTURE! 

Photo Credit: C.F. Photography