Because of our previous successes at both the Lakeland and Appleton district events, we headed into DCMP having earned the highest total points (74) of any team in the Wisconsin district — a great sign heading into what would be one of our most eventful competitions yet.

In the weeks leading up to DCMP, we had been pouring a lot of time and effort into making changes to our robot to hopefully increase its performance in match. We decided to expand our shooter from 2 fuel wide to 2.9 fuel wide, modified our intake to use a single roller instead of two, and swapped out the bellypan to save weight. None of these were small changes — this required us to completely take our robot apart, rewire everything from scratch, and then reassemble it all back together.

On the first day of DCMP, things got off to a stressful start before we even played a match. Severe weather alerts spread all over the area, and at one point we had to shelter in place for a tornado warning. With all the disruption, we were never able to get field calibration done and there weren't any practice matches to work with either. Fortunately, we had finished loading in before any of the severe weather hit, so our pit and robot came out unscathed.

The second day of competition was where things really started to wear on us. It felt like almost every match brought a new problem — we were constantly rushing to replace intake plates, fix the shooter, or patch up parts that had never given us trouble before. We were racing to the field for nearly every match, and more often than not we were dealing with a breakdown that left us unable to contribute offensively. That said, when we couldn't score, we made the most of it by playing tough defense and doing what we could to limit the other alliance's output. Still, walking away from day 2 with a 4-5 record stung, especially after coming in with so much momentum.

On the final day of qualification matches, we battled hard and came away with a win to add to our record, finishing qualifications at 5-7 heading into playoffs. Between matches, we managed to get most of the robot repaired and feeling more solid, though there was still a question mark hanging over how it would hold up under playoff pressure. When alliance selection came around, third alliance captain 2194 Fondy Fire chose us as their first pick, followed by 6421 WarriorBots as their second. It was a fun bit of history — this alliance was actually a partial rebuild of two alliances from earlier district events. 1732, 8701, and 6421 had been our team at Lakeland, and 2194, 6732, and 11258 had been our group at Appleton.

Once playoffs started, all the work we had put into repairing the robot between matches started to show. We didn't break a single intake plate and didn't suffer any major mechanical issues throughout the bracket, riding that reliability all the way to finals without dropping a match. Finals 1 hit a rough patch when we made contact with 10553 mid-match and they stopped moving, which resulted in our alliance being issued a red card and costing us the match. Finals 2 was an incredibly tight game — both alliances put up over 400 points, and we ultimately fell short by just 7.

Even so, by the time we had gotten through our first few playoff matches, we had already locked up enough points to secure our spot at Worlds. Given this, and everything we had fought through over the course of the competition, we were not disappointed in our performance.