Team 48 just returned from the 2026 Midwest Regional. 35 teams competed at this event from Illinois, Mexico, Chinese Taipei, Croatia, and Ohio!

Riding high after our success in Rochester, and after a week and a half of improvements and practice, we were anxious to get out on the field. The whole team was excited as match schedule was released. The collective optimism was palpable. We got a match schedule that we were pleased with and 3rd party statistics tools predicted that we would win all but two of our matches. Of course, predictions are just a best guess, so we arrived Friday to try and prove that we could keep up with the predictions. We played 10 qualification matches and finished with a 5W – 5L record seeding us 13th of 35 teams. Not quite what we were hoping for, but we performed well and left a good impression with our friends at the event. A side note, we also hold the event high score of 585 points in a match with teams 111 and 5847.

During alliance selection, we got great news. Team 2338, Gear It Forward from Oswego, IL, chose us with their 1st pick of the #3 alliance. They then went on to pick team 8029, Steel Broncos Robotics from Barrington, IL, to round out the alliance. For the second time this year, our alliance stayed in the top bracket all the way to the finals, beating the #1 alliance on the way there. The finals then consisted of our alliance and alliance #1 consisting of team 111, Wildstang from Arlington Heights, IL, team 5847, Ironclad from Bradley, IL, and team 8122, the Mechanical Mustaches from Chicago, IL. Even though we beat alliance #1 in the upper bracket, that was regarded as a fluke and we were the underdogs in the match with a predicted 1 in 10 chance to win each match of the series. As we’re well aware, the finals are game of endurance and reliability. That’s what this series came down to. The #1 alliance got beat up in their journey to the finals. Still this would be a tough series. Alliance #3 won the first match in a best of 3 tournament with a score of 250-223. Then came match 2. Both alliances played well. The score bounced back and forth as expected. Then as the timer inched closer to 0:00, Alliance #3 started to run away with the score. After a long wait for the referees to confer and certify the results, Alliance 3 pulled off upset and became the 2026 FIRST Midwest Regional Champions!!

During the event, one of our safety captains, Ke’Mareya Russell won the Safety Star of the Day award, continuing our long tradition of winning safety related awards and our culture of safety on Team 48. Congratulations to her and her mentor, Donnell Conner.

Now, World Championship advancement works like Nascar in that you earn points at each of your events. The top 3 teams at each event are automatically advanced to the championship. We missed that by 5 points. So we go into the advancement pool where slots are awarded based on the number of slots still open for the event and the number of events that occur each week. It appears that we’ll miss this upcoming distribution also, but we’re optimistic that we will qualify for the championship soon. Stay Tuned!