With the seconds ticking by on the clock, teams of kids worked frantically to complete their robots in time for the scheduled competitions.
From 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, 24 middle school teams from all across the mid-Michigan area came to IM Sports-Circle to compete in the seventh annual Spartan Engineering FIRST LEGO League Challenge East Lansing Regional Tournament. The event challenged the teams to create a robot that can complete predesigned missions in only two minutes and 30 seconds.
“It’s a tournament, and basically, they have a bunch of middle schools come out to participate,” computer science and engineering freshman Abigail Orchiri, with Spartan Engineering, said. “Seven teams move onto the state level from this competition. Basically, the idea is that we want to get little kids interested in engineering at a young age.”
The challenge had four parts: the project, the technical interview, the core values and the robot game. The kids compete in the various competitions throughout the event until the award ceremony at the end of the day.
Jennifer Patselas, a parent of a member of the Women in Science and Engineering, WISE, team coming from Ann Arbor, said her daughter is new to the program.
“I have a daughter who’s 12, and this is her first year doing it,” Patselas said. “She’s having a good time, and she’s enjoyed each step of the process.”
Patselas said the event is a great way to get the next generation interested in engineering.
“She’s been exposed to things through this program that she otherwise would never have been exposed to,” Patselas said. “The way we do things, it’s definitely a very well-rounded experience. The kids get to see each step of the process.”
Katie Heslip, a member of the participating Lego Ladies team, said her favorite part of the day came after the actual competitions. While the kids waited for the award ceremony to begin, the disc jockey entertained them by playing popular dance songs such as “Macarena” and “Gangnam Style.”
“I liked the part where we all got to dance at the end,” Heslip said.
Dave Love, the coach of the Lego Ladies, said the day couldn’t have gone better than it did.
“It was a great day,” Love said. “We had lots of competition — lots of friendly competition. The girls all worked together. We have an all-girls team. And they built the robot and programmed it, and they had a great time, win or lose.”
At the end of the event, medals and trophies were given out to the top three teams in each of the categories. The seven teams that qualified for states were announced, and the Spartan Engineers encouraged the teams to return next year.
To learn more about the FIRST LEGO League challenges, visit www.firstlegoleague.org.
Support student media!
Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
Discussion
Share and discuss “Students host annual Lego League Challenge ” on social media.
