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Risen Son Christian School participated for their fourth year at the First LEGO League championship competition with several returning students.
With the success they had in the past, they set their goals high and aimed for the grand champion award.
First LEGO League (FLL) is a robotics program for 9 to 14 year olds, which is designed to get children excited about science and technology.
Fifty-four different teams from around the state program an autonomous robot built by them, to score points on a thematic playing surface, create an innovative solution to a problem as part of their project, all while guided by the FLL Core Values.
During competition, teams are judged in four areas, Robot Design, the Robot Game, Project, and FLL Core Values.
This year they had 13 kids come out for the team, but since the competition is limited to 10 students, they had to cut the team down right before competition with the remainder coming to cheer their fellow students on.
Meetings were held after school every Wednesday from early September so the kids could work on their project, focusing on the four areas of competition.
The state tournament was December 3 at the Casper Event Center, and once again the hard work paid off as the team performed well at competition.
This year's theme for the competition was animal allies, so the team named themselves the Faithful Eagles with a team verse of Proverbs 12:10 "Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel."
The morning of the tournament the teams present their work to judges for their robot design, project, and core values. They are judged on how well they understand the concepts of their design, how much research they did on the project, how well they present ideas, and how the interact with each other and the judges. The second half of the day, the team competed in the robot rounds where points are awarded for missions accomplished. They competed in three rounds, and the best score of the three is used to place the teams.
After finishing fifth last year in this part of the competition, they had high hopes to finish in the top. After the final round, the team finished the robot games in second place.
This year, with a top finish in the robot games, the team took home two second place trophies. The first trophy was for programming, which the team really focused on this year, and the second was for placing second in the robot games. They were not chosen in the top three overall, but with another successful year they will push to be at the top next year.
The students were able to participate in large part due to a donation from the Hot Springs County Endowment Fund.
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