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North Branch FIRST Tech Challenge Program has advanced three teams to the state meet February 16-17, 2024 at River Center in St. Paul.  RoboGlaciers(7288), FIRE (8636) and Glitchy Bears (8637) with members in grades 7-10 from North Branch Area Public Schools will all be advancing.

Team 7290 (JagWires) also had excellent recent qualifying competitions but needed to win one more match to qualify for state.  According to team leader, Becky Leuer, “These are the most teams we have ever qualified for state and it was especially exciting to have all four teams qualify for the Elimination Rounds in their last tournament."

The first competition was the weekend of November 18 and 19 in Prior Lake.  Glitchy Bears finished their competition with a 4-2 record in 6th place but did not get selected for the Elimination Rounds. Sunday, North Branch had three teams competing.  At the end of qualification matches, RoboGlaciers was in 3rd place with a 5-1 record, FIRE was in 10th place with a 3-3 record and JagWires finished in 11th place also with a 3-3 record.  Both RoboGlaciers and FIRE were selected to advance to the Elimination Rounds which are best two out of three matches.  FIRE, as part of the first Place Alliance, advanced to the finals after winning both of their matches, as did RoboGlaciers as part of the second place alliance.  This set the stage for the two teams to face each other in the finals.  RoboGlaciers won that match 2-1 and by virtue of being on the winning alliance was rewarded with a trip to state December 9 in Irondale, and after spending three weeks making improvements on their robots, the teams had an excellent day of competition.  RoboGlaciers, the all-girls team, finished the round of competition with a perfect 6-0 record, followed by FIRE in fourth, Glitchy Bears in ninth and JagWires in 16th.

In the Elimination Rounds, RoboGlaciers and Glitchy Bears were part of the first place alliance, FIRE was selected as part of the second place alliance and JagWires were part of the third place alliance.  Alliances are made up of three teams with two teams from each alliance competing against each other.  In the second round, the third team in each alliance must compete and if a third round is needed, any of the two teams can compete.  RoboGlaciers and Glitchy Bears advanced to the finals with a 2-0 record, FIRE narrowly edged out JagWires 2-1 to advance to finals.  A dominant performance by RoboGlaciers and Glitchy Bears had them winning the entire competition with a 2-0 sweep.

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