The 2025 competition season is over for the Scalawags. We came in 31st out of 34 teams at our final event, Wilsonville, and won an imagery award! At Wilsonville, our imagery team hosted a workshop explaining our process to other teams. We talked about our sustainability, and how we incorporate our values into our visual projects.

Even though we’re done competing (at least until off-season events), there’s still plenty to do before next year! As this is being written, most of the team is hard at work bagging cans for a can drive. We will be hard at work all summer long, fundraising and doing outreach to prepare for 2026. We will also be doing maintenance and repairs to our outreach bot and The Aluminum Pearl, making sure we have them for demos and skill building.

The Scalawags are so grateful to all of our sponsors for making everything we do possible. Thank you for your continued support! If you are interested in sponsoring STEAM learning in Lebanon, please reach out to us! We need your help to be able to compete again next year! <3

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

We will be having a can and bottle drive through the first of December! BottleDrop will be matching 20% of funds raised during that time. If you have extra cans or bottles, feel free to bring them by the shop or contact us!