Toilets of Tomorrow

Yesterday, Micah's First Lego League (FLL) team competed in their qualifier event, along with 45 other teams. I've mostly been leaving FLL entirely to Micah and am so impressed with how well they did!

(I didn't actually get to the event until the end of the day, as I spent the morning at Noah's JOAD tournament. After that, Noah and I drove back from Longmont directly to the FLL event.)

So. Here's my understanding in a nutshell:

This was one of several qualifying events around the state. From each qualifier, a certain percentage of teams are invited to advance to the state competition in December. (From this one, 9 of the 45 teams advanced.)

The competition consists of four different parts:

• robot design (teams met with the judges, showed off their designed robot and answered questions)
• project (teams had five minutes to present their project to judges, offering a "solution" to a problem in the field of hydro dynamics (this year's topic), and then answered questions)
• core values (teams were given a surprise, timed teamwork activity to complete in front of judges to demonstrate how well the team communicates and respects one another)
• robot performance (after two practice rounds, teams got three timed rounds to try to earn as many points as possible by getting their robot to complete different missions...best round score was the score that stood)

So. Nathan got Micah to the event early and the team spent the morning getting through the first three judging events. According to Micah, things went well. He'd particularly worked on the project portion of things...writing the script and working on his numerous lines. The team, based on their project, picked the team name Toilets of Tomorrow and proudly pitched their idea after hours of practice runs. (Spectators weren't allowed at most things but Nathan took a video of the project presentation for me (and I'd seen a practice run a few weeks ago), and the robot performance rounds were open to the public.)

Noah and I arrived in time to watch the last two robot performance runs. Only two team members at a time were allowed at the table for each run:

And then we waited. :) 

The award ceremony gathered all 46 teams together where pins were distributed to all participants and then trophies were presented for each of the component parts and the overall top three.

The Toilets of Tomorrow took second in robot performance and third overall!!!

They were thrilled! And we're so proud of them all...they really did a fabulous job, especially considering this is the first time any of them has done this and that they're on the young end of the age bracket with two nine year olds, an eleven year old and two twelve year olds. Big thanks to their coaches, who, fortunately *have* done this before!

And now we're on to the state competition (which will be in December, on the same day as Noah's next JOAD tournament, of course, lol). :)

Comments

[Micah]

I actually came up with the team name, project idea, and did all the script. I was also the 2nd in command to Yousef on the robot portion. Just clarifying that since it got slightly lost in the post.

-Micah

[Nancy]

Congratulations, Micah! Amazing work! np