The Mound Westonka Tonkabots robotics team took second place at the FIRST Robotics North Star Regional, held April 2-5 at the University of Minnesota
April 10, 2025—While the Mound Westonka High School robotics team 6147, the Tonkabots, have already earned a spot at the FRC Robotics World Championships with a first-place win at the Lake Superior Regionals last month, this year the team chose to challenge themselves even more, adding a second regional to their schedule. Last weekend, the Tonkabots were among 48 teams across three states that filled Mariucci Arena on the University of Minnesota campus to compete in the FIRST Robotics North Star Regional.
One might think that coming into a regional with a Worlds qualification already guaranteed from earlier in the season would take some of the pressure off of the team from the competition. However, their first win had no effect on the Tonkabots’ tenacity as they continued working feverishly to improve their robot’s capabilities, putting in more late nights, weekends, and even spring break working at school.
In their time between their Week 1 regional in Duluth and Week 6 at the U of M, the team fine-tuned their programming, coding the robot to score the most points possible during the first 15 seconds of the match when operators must remain hands-off. The team’s robot, “Squid,” features vision capabilities that read and respond to graphic codes called “April Tags” that are strategically positioned on the field based on the code written by students. During their time between regional competitions, the team also worked to redesign and improve their scoring mechanism, enabling it to now capture game pieces from not just one, but both sides of the robot. Among robot improvements, the team was also busy meeting with local businesses and working hard to bring in sponsors and raise money to help offset the costs to send the team to the World Championships in Houston next week.
Last week, the Tonkabots showcased their skill throughout the first day of practice matches and the two following days of qualifications, achieving and breaking multiple high scores along the way, landing them in the No. 2 position overall going into finals. This ranking awarded the Tonkabots the role of alliance captains, where they chose team 2530, “Inconceivable” of Rochester, and team 2480, “Iron Paws” of Minneapolis, to compete as their alliance partners.
Stacked with some of the most competitive robots in the state, the semi-finals were sure to be hard-fought, and the Tonkabots did just that. Working their way through the semi-finals, after a brief drop down to the lower bracket, the team worked their way up to their place in the final top two, where they would once again compete in regional finals.
The Tonkabots started finals match one strong with a flawless 15-second autonomous performance by the robot. However, soon after, the stress of the weekend’s beating combined with some unfortunate gravitational forces on a game piece caused a major break in the robot, rendering the team helpless on the field for scoring. The drive team pivoted into defense mode for the rest of the match while their alliance partners fought to score, but with Squid unable to perform at his peak, the first final match was a loss. The winner of the event is the best two out of three, and with a disabled robot on the first match, the outcome was looking grim.
However, not even this loss took the fight out of the Tonkabots. With only 15 minutes until the second final match, the team ran to their pit and furiously scrambled to MacGyver a fix that involved melting part of a critical 3D printed part to get the robot back together just in time to race back onto the field with zip ties and power tools still in hand. The team shocked their fans in the second finals match, as their frantic fix miraculously pulled off yet another flawless autonomous scoring period and a high scoring match that lost by just 9 points.
The Tonkabots not only brought home a second-place finalist trophy, but were thrilled to be awarded the “Best Autonomous Award” for the second year running for their programming. The team went home still exhibiting the FIRST Robotics’ core values of “gracious professionalism” and “coopertition.” Reiterating that they were still going to Worlds anyway, Tonkabot team member Leo Koubsky commented, “Because our teammate was also already going to Worlds, only one more team would have gone to Worlds [if we won]. But because we lost, an extra Minnesota team gets to go to Worlds!”
Yoji Shimizu, beloved FIRST Robotics emcee, mentor, and University of Minnesota professor was overheard in his interactions with the team afterwards, saying that this was perhaps one of the most competitive finals he has seen, calling the final matches “Worlds level” gameplay. The team plans to continue their Worlds-level gameplay in Houston April 16-19, joining 50,000 people from 50+ countries who gather for the largest robotics competition in the world, but not without first spending yet another week of late nights applying their second regional learnings to the improvement of their robot!
If you or your company would like to be a part of the Tonkabots’ victories next season, visit www.tonkabots.com/sponsor
