Bemidji Robojacks Earn World Championship Bid After Winning Prestigious Regional Honor

Matthew Bernard walked into every arena at the 2025 Lake Superior Regional wearing something no other competitor carried: a jacket covered in pins and buttons collected from every competition the Robojacks had attended since 2013. By the time the Duluth tournament ended in early March, he had one more reason to add to the collection.

The Bemidji High School Robojacks, officially FIRST Robotics Team 4674, won the Impact Award at the Lake Superior Regional, FIRST Robotics' highest team honor, and with it, a berth at the 2025 FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas. The world championship ran April 16 to 19 at the George R. Brown Convention Center, drawing FIRST Robotics Competition teams from across the globe, backed by more than 200 Fortune 500 company sponsors.

The Impact Award does not go to the team with the best robot. It goes to the team that best embodies FIRST's mission of spreading STEM opportunity to every student who wants it. For the Robojacks, that meant years of community outreach, championing Unified Robotics to make the sport accessible to students of all abilities, and hosting the first Unified Robotics competition ever held in Minnesota at Bemidji High School. The team also received the Foster Award for promoting a cultural norm of inclusion in their community.

Head coach Kirk Anderson, whose team finished 7-4 at the regional and ranked 12th overall, has never framed the program purely around rankings. "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?"

That framing matters in Beltrami County. The region's manufacturing base requires workers who can collaborate, communicate, and solve problems under pressure, precisely what Anderson said a robotics season builds. Team member Connor Anderson is among the students putting those lessons into practice. At 15 members, the Robojacks' roster is smaller than the average FRC team, meaning every student carries a larger share of the technical, logistical, and outreach work.

The program's history in Northern Minnesota runs more than a decade. The Robojacks' rookie year was 2013, and in 2017 they helped found the Northern Minnesota Robotics Conference, which grew to include 34 FIRST Robotics teams from Minnesota and North Dakota and became the first robotics conference officially recognized by the Minnesota State High School League. At the Lake Superior Regional, the Robojacks were joined by the Bemidji Middle School Whistlepunks, who finished ranked 11th overall, a sign that the pipeline feeding the region's robotics programs extends well below the high school level.

Getting to Houston required community investment as much as competition results. The Robojacks drew support from Bemidji Steel, TEAM Industries, the Gene Haas Foundation, the Midco Foundation, LaValley Industries, Eagles Club Post 351, First National Bank, Miller McDonald, and Fastenal. Anderson put the Impact Award win in plain terms: "To win the Impact Award at regionals, it's a testament to the students, their values, their dedication to the mission of FIRST, to bring STEM opportunities to everyone."

For a 15-member team from rural Minnesota to reach a world championship alongside programs from far larger schools and districts, Bernard's ever-growing pin collection may be the most fitting symbol: one piece added at a time, over more than a decade of showing up.