States Recap!

Stryke Force competed at the Michigan District Championship, held at Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU) this past weekend. Thank you to SVSU, DTE Foundation, Consumers Energy. Hemlock Semiconductors, APTIV Foundation, and all of the volunteers who made this event possible.

For those who are unfamiliar with the State level of competitions, this runs a little differently than the District level. Teams are placed on one of four different fields (in this case, DTE, Consumers, Hemlock, or APTIV). Then, teams battle it out to receive winners for each division/field. After that, those winners face off to crown the overall winner of the states competition.

This year, Stryke Force was on the Consumers Energy field.

Going into day 1 of competition, Stryke Force had a rocky start to the competition, losing their first match. The robot wasn't running how we hoped to, with some grounding and turret alignment issues. Our next match went a lot smoother, we got the win, and we fixed the problems that happened previously. We ended up losing our third and final qualification match of day 1.

The goal for Day 2 was to make up as much ground as we could, to hopefully secure one of the top ranks in he competition, going into alliance selection. We did just that! The rest of our qualification matches went much smoother, and we ended up securing the rank 2 position at the end of qualification matches.

Now, it was time for alliance selection. Stryke Force was chosen as the first pick by the number one ranked team, 6090 Wayland Wildcats. Next, to finish Alliance 1, we chose Team 2586 Copper Bots.

After qualification matches and alliance selection comes elimination matches. Starting off Day 3 bright and early began the elimination bracket journey. Our alliance soared through the top end of the bracket, not dropping a single match, and landing ourselves into the finals of the Consumers Energy Division.

In the finals, it was Alliance 1 versus Alliance 2. Who would come out on top? The anwer of that question was us! Our alliance won in two straight matches, crowning us the winners of the Consumers Energy Division!

Our winnings didn't stop there. Stryke Force was also awarded the Excellence in Engineering Award presented by Littelfuse, which celebrates the team whose machine incorporates an engineering solution design to have components work together seamlessly. This is what the judges had to say about our robot and why we earned this award: "Their goal was to always be shooting and flying across the field. To achieve this high-speed performance, they grounded their engineering process to optimize their system. They significantly boosted their machine's resiliency and brushed away the competition, by integrating a design that struck copper."

Our journey didn't stop there, we now had to face the winners of the three other divisions, to hopefully come out on top as the 2026 Michigan District State Champions on the field known as FiM-stein (the finals of the four division winners). That was where we fell short, losing out in two straight matches. We are so proud of what we achieved at this competition, and we cannot wait for Worlds.