The History of Kraken Pinion

Team 8680 Kraken Pinion was created during the Velocity Vortex season and was composed of mostly freshmen and sophomores. Although we did not advance to the Super Regional tournament, we did win the lottery to compete in the World Championship, placing 16th in our division and ranking 37th in the world out of more than 5000 teams, according to FTC stats. This instilled a competitive, yet gracious nature in the team that made us prosper in the years after. In every year since, we have been state finalists, advancing to the world championship twice more, and consistently ranking amongst the top teams in the world.

As our school’s most successful team, our league decided to turn Kraken Pinion into a "varsity" team, taking in many talented individuals from the other teams at our school and merging them into one dedicated team. We hold strict interviews to find the best engineers in our district to join the team. 

List of Awards and Achievements

2016-2017 "Velocity Vortex":

Milwaukee Regional:

Control award

Finalist alliance captain

qualified for Wisconsin State Championship

Wisconsin State Championship:

Finalist alliance

Think award

qualified for the World Championship

2017-2018 "Relic Recovery":

Thumb Wars Regional:

Winning alliance Captain

Control award

qualified for Wisconsin State Championship

Wisconsin State Championship:

Finalist alliance Captain

Think award

qualified for Northwestern Super Regional

Northwestern Super Regional:

Connect award

Winning alliance

qualified for World Championship

World Championship:

division finalist alliance

Chicago Robotics Invitational:

Winning alliance

2018-2019 "Rover Ruckus":

Lake Country Regional:

Winning alliance Captain

Innovate award

Thumb Wars Qualifier:

Winning alliance Captain

Inspire award

Wisconsin State Championship:

Winning alliance Captain

qualified for Northwestern Super Regional

Northwestern Super Regional:

Winning alliance captain

qualified for World Championship

World Championship:

Division Finalist alliance

Inspire award Finalist

Chicago Robotics Invitational:

Winning alliance

Indiana Robotics Invitational:

Finalist alliance Captain

2019-2020 "Skystone":

Wildcat Regional:

Winning alliance Captain

Control award

Advanced to State Championship

Knack Attack Regional:

Innovate award

*only attended two regionals instead of three

Wisconsin State Championship:

Design award

Winning alliance

2020-2021 "Ultimate Goal":

Highlander Regional:

Winning alliance

Innovate award

Advanced to State Championship

Patriot Games Regional:

Finalist alliance

Think award

Knack Attack Regional:

Control award

Wisconsin State Championship:

Control award

Finalist alliance Captain

2021-2022 "Freight Frenzy":

Lakeshore Regional:

Control award

Fox Valley Regional:

Think award

Advanced to State Championship  

Frozen Frenzy Regional:

Control award

Finalist alliance Captain

Wisconsin State Championship:

Finalist alliance

Design award 

2022-2023 "Power Play":

Lakeshore Regional:

Control Award

Advanced to Wisconsin State Championship

Finalist alliance 1st pick

Battle of Brookfield Regional:

Finalist Alliance Captain

Connect award

Frozen Frenzy Regional:

Winning Alliance Captain

Wisconsin State Championship:

Winning Alliance Captain

Advanced to the World Championship

Our Mission

Our goal every season is to transcend the boundaries of FIRST through competition and outreach, while displaying gracious professionalism. We aspire to create an interest in STEM within people of all ages and develop our team members’ engineering skills for the purpose of preparing ourselves to change the world in positive and meaningful ways later in life. Our team is designed to inspire ambitious students and teach the skills of engineering to them through collaborative work. 

Likewise, we spread the importance of FIRST to our community and businesses to create an impact in the education of young minds and apply our knowledge to the real world. We don’t just build a robot, we relay all our knowledge to the new students by explaining our design process, teamwork skills and providing feedback to their ideas; subsequently helping them learn how to imagine, brainstorm, design, build, analyze, and produce a robot of their own. Eventually, as the upperclassmen graduate, the team is entrusted with the younger students as they become the new teachers. The graduates go on to apply everything that they have learned through FTC to college and their careers; going out into the world as experienced engineers and putting them at a huge advantage when using engineering design later in life.