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Salem Event

And that’s our first competition of the 2025 season done! The Scalawags gave it our all, competing long and hard for two very busy, tiring days. We played all of our matches as defense only, and were trying to get our climber working for the entirety of the event. We ended up placing in last place overall for the event, but we still had a lot of fun and got some great experience. Check out our Instagram for pictures from the event!

Now we’re back in the shop getting ready for our next competition in Wilsonville. Programmers are getting our game-piece arm tested and ready for scoring coral, and mechanical is making tweaks and fixes to get us ship-shape for next time. Imagery is making repairs and revisions, and drive team is looking forward to getting some practice time in to get to know how to drive this year’s robot, The Aluminum Pearl, the best they can.

Scrimmage Recap

This Sunday we went to scrimmage, a practice event for teams to get a feel for the game before their competitions. We were able to let our drivers drive on the field for one practice match, and our scouting team was able to practice gathering data from the stands. It was a great opportunity to show our newer members a taste of what comp will be, and let the whole team see how other people tackled the challenges of Reefscape.

Our team is hard at work preparing for our first competition in a week, with programmers working as hard as they can to make the robot operable while our Imagery and Build Book groups are continuing their work. We will be competing at the Salem Fair Grounds from Friday the 28th through Saturday, March 1st, and we hope to see you there!

Build Season Update

Scrimmage is fast approaching, and the Scalawags are making great progress. For the first time in a while, the programming team has their hands on the robot ahead of schedule! The majority of components are mounted and secured onto the robot, and everything that can be wired has been. All that’s left is game piece management and vision, which will be completed soon. Temporary bumpers have been finished, and the final ones are in the works. The imagery team is hard at work on pit decor and our mascot costumes for this year!

Scrimmage is on Sunday the 16th at Corvallis High School. The Scalawags and several other teams will be there to get our first look at how the game will be played. The event will be open to the public from 10am-4pm, and we hope to see you there!

Build Season Update and Scrimmage Info

A lot of progress has been made over the past week here in the Pirates’ Cove! All of the sub-teams have been hard at work. The climber sub-team is almost finished and after many revisions, the climber is mounted on the robot! The game-piece management team is working towards finished on their mechanism, and for the first time ever, we are working on a build book! The build book will be in our pit at competition, and be a sort of scrapbook of our build season. Programmers have been making huge amounts of progress with vision, getting us set up to use AprilTags this season!

We held our second Jr. Robotics lesson in the new shop this morning, with 11 junior engineers in attendance. They watched the kickoff video and tried to figure out how they would have solved the problem, then they built their own robots out of Lego. Afterwards they made paper-mâché starfish to decorate our pit at comp!

Scrimmage will be held at Corvallis High School on the 16th of February, time is to be determined, stay posted for updates! Teams from all over the state will be at scrimmage, running practice matches and getting some crucial drive practice in. The event will be open to the public, and the Scalawags hope to see you there!

Build Season Update, 15 Days In

The first two weeks of build season have been extremely productive for the Scalawags. We have been hard at work five days a week in the shop, prototyping, building and testing components for our robot for the 2025 game, Reefscape.

The first two days were all hands on deck for brainstorming, deciding how we want to play this game and getting broad ideas for how exactly we would score points. The team split into sub groups for designing game piece handling and climbing, two major components of the game.

We had two great ideas for game piece management. Two subgroups were formed to further prototype and research those ideas, while a third team set to work on the climbing mechanism and a fourth group got to work on designing our logo for the year and other imagery things.

The team came together and voted as a group on which game piece handling mechanism we wanted. Then we dove into production and manufacturing, with our art team and programmers hard at work to make sure that everything comes together for a functioning robot and an incredible pit for competition.

Open House Update

On Saturday the team hosted an open house in our new shop, The Pirates’ Cove. We opened our doors during the afternoon for community members, sponsors and alumni to come and check out our new space. More than 100 people came by and toured our space, bought some ScalaSwag and raffle tickets and enjoyed snacks. We made a little over $500 in Swag sales and raffle tickets! Many thanks to all of the businesses who made donations for the raffle! Items from HNB House, Makers Studio, J&C BBQ, Oregon Indoor Shooting Range, Tremls Jewelry, Strawberry Shop, Bloom, Camilla’s Candles, Swings & Vines, Windswept Designs, Blessed Tree Massage, K&G, Lebanon Art Guild and Chelsea’s Craft Shack were raffled off.

The 2025 Competition season starts very soon, and we are still in desperate need of sponsors. If you or someone you know wants to support STEAM learning in your community (and have your logo on our robot) reach out to us at frcteam1359@gmail.com for more information!

The Scalawags have found a new home!

After six long years of searching, the Scalawags have finally found a new shop. Students, mentors and parents spent several days moving all of our things out of the old shop and into our new, downtown home. The team met and named our new shop The Pirate’s Cove. Move in finished on November 23, now all that remains is to get everything unpacked and organized in time for build season! We will be hosting an open house in our new shop space on December 21 from 1-4 PM. Sponsors, interested students, and anyone else who wants to come and see what we’re all about is welcome to come on down to 605 S Main Street, on the corner of Ash and Main.