Oct. 26 -- BEMIDJI -- Senior Matthew Bernard isn't exactly hard to spot at a robotics event.
Most of the Bemidji High School's robotics team -- the Robojacks -- sport a red and black checkered flannel as a team uniform.
But Bernard's flannel is plastered with pins, denoting different events and opponents the Robojacks have competed in and against in recent years.
There's a CyberBears pin. There's one from Boston Scientific. There's a button picturing the green and yellow bison of North Dakota State from a robotics competition at the university. There's a Bemidji Unified robotics button, a new chapter recently formed by the Robojacks.
The tradition isn't unique to Bernard -- the team has been collecting pins and buttons for some time now -- but he's donned it with pride since his sophomore year with the team.
"It's whoever is crazy enough to wear it -- Matthew happens to be that person this year," Robojacks coach Kirk Anderson said. "It's kind of become a little bit of a trademark. There's people who know the Robojacks are here because you can hear the button shirt coming around."
At Friday's Northern Minnesota Robotics Conference Championship at the Bemidji High School, Bernard didn't add any buttons to the shirt. Most of the competitors at the event were area schools who've already faced off against the Robojacks before. But Bernard did earn an individual award.
The NMRC named Bernard the team member of the year.
Each year in early January, FIRST Robotics releases a game manual, kicking off a robotics season that lasts into the Spring.
The manual presents teams with a new game and rules, giving robotics programs across the country a chance to craft a new robot for the year's competitions.
"I got into robotics because I like working with my hands," senior Sam Maus said. "I like designing and building stuff, and it's been really cool to come from January, when you start building and designing, all the way to March when you have a finished robot and you're ready for competition."
Friday's NMRC Championship at BHS was a friendly competition, an offseason event for Northern Minnesota teams to compete in the 2024 game 'Crescendo.'
"It's another event that we can do in our offseason so we're staying active, keeping our robots up to date," Bernard said. "Maintaining them, improving them, learning new skills."
In crescendo, there's a red team and a blue team, each made up of three different robotics groups. The robots are deployed in an arena, collecting yellow foam rings and depositing them in a multitude of different boxes and shutes.
The game is played through multiple rounds with multiple different team makeups in the qualifying rounds. By the end of qualifiers, the teams are ranked based on wins and certain in-game scoring benchmarks.
The top four robotics teams are then automatically marked as alliance leaders and choose two other groups to unite for the championship rounds.
The Robojacks' robot, dubbed 'Jack', put up an impressive showing at Friday's events, finishing with a 5-2 record and a No. 9 ranking after qualifying rounds.
"Oftentimes, teams will look for a well-rounded robot," Bernard said. "We look for how we are going to be able to score the most points the most effectively and the most consistently. And that's usually what we build."
Jack was especially proficient at scoring in the 'speaker' -- one of the taller shutes that requires the robot to shoot the foom ring up into an opening on Friday.
"What you want is a robot that does its job," Anderson said. "Today, I'm looking at our robot, it's not the fastest out there, it's not the absolute most accurate, but it's doing its job. It's consistent, and that shows up."
Despite that solid showing and top-10 finish in the qualifying rounds, the Robojacks were not one of the teams selected to compete in the championships.
Friday's competition wasn't just about the results in the arena. The NMRC's impact award was another major feature of the event, handed out to the team judged to have the most impact on their local community.
At some point throughout the event, each team gave a presentation to the judges about what they've done for their community. The Robojacks had plenty to say.
"One of the things we identified (as a team value) was impact or service to the community," Anderson said. "Technical skill is great, but unless you can use it to make the world a better place, what's the point?"
BHS participants have visited events around Bemidji to spread the word about robotics, giving presentations to elementary schools and participating in fairs and parades.
Often the focus of those presentations are the skills and attributes gained from robotics, both the technical and the less tangible.
"(We talked about) how robotics have helped us in high school and how it will help us later," junior Quinn Burrow said. "Mostly it's helping me develop skills I'll need at a job -- I'm not sure what I want to go into, but it is helping me."
"You always think of the technical skills, engineering, the fabrication, the programming; but what you'll find is (when) you go to business, it's soft skills," Anderson said. "Can you hold a conversation with somebody, can you be the kind of teammate somebody else wants to be with, whether it's on a robotics team or a manufacturing firm? And if you have an idea, can you communicate it?"
In addition to community outreach, the Robojacks continued Bemidji High School's strong tradition of Unified sports with their recent creation of a Unified robotics chapter.
The Unified group gets together and builds Lego robots, kicking off the season in late September to prepare for November's regional championship.
Though the Robojacks weren't awarded with the NMRC's impact award, a plaque was hardly the goal of the team's community outreach.
"It really comes down to trying to help the kids learn to be the type of people who give back to the community," Anderson said. "We recognized that in our school, we value bringing students of all abilities together. Robotics is a way to do that, so we've embraced that."