Klager team wins Core Values Award at First Lego League Robotics Competition in Brighton. Photo courtesy of Rebecca Harvey.

Saturday, May 12th, seven Klager Elementary students competed in the First Lego League Robotics Competition in Brighton. During this, their rookie season, Lila Harvey, Olivia Scheil, Avery Popejoy, Oliver Bushaw, Mason Meyer, Nolan Shepard and Joshua Gregory, coached by Nicholas Diggs and Sara Scheil, had been working over the past few months on programming a robot they called Wall-E. Wall-E had to complete a number of missions and received points for each mission successfully completed.

Team member and Klager 6th grader, Oliver Bushaw explained how the competition worked: "First Lego League is a competition in which you get a Lego kit and make a robot with it. When you make your robot, you start programming your robot to tell it what to do. When you get comfortable with your robot you get a challenge kit, that includes a mat. The mat will have various challenges to do, all worth points. For instance, you can choose to do a challenge where you move a firetruck to put out fire or try and drop water to start a fountain. There is no real water used in it, just Lego pieces that look like water. You have to do this all in 2.5 minutes. You may add new addition to your robot, like a claw."

The team competed in three rounds and their best score of the three rounds was used as their performance score. They also had a presentation that they had to prepare regarding the theme of this year's competition which was water conservation. They did a presentation on Enbridge Line 5. Oliver stated, "Enbridge Line 5 is a pipeline going across the Great Lakes, that is 10 years overdue and has lots of dents in it. We came up with the idea to put a larger pipe around the smaller pipe. Our coach happened to know Mr. Greenlee, one of Michigan's greatest helpers. Mr. Greenlee said our idea was a little costly but not as costly as losing our Great Lakes."

After their presentation, they answered questions from the judges about their presentation and their experience. Although they didn't win, the team performed well and won the Core Values Award.

Oliver continued, "We won the core value award, having the most interesting group and the best project. In the competition there are two teams competing to get the most points in a limited time. We did not do the best, getting 8th out of 11. But we did win the core value award and had lots of fun."

He concluded, "Robotics is an amazing experience that is so much more than making robots."

(photos courtesy of Rebecca Harvey)