Lego Lakers Logo


 

Lego Lakers - Men in Black Robotics Team                                                        Contact: David Alan Wolters
16668 Northwood Trail                                                                                     616.844.6909
Spring Lake, MI 49456                                                                                      coach@legolakers.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 7, 2008

Spring Lake LEGO Robotics Team Wins FIRST PLACE OVERALL at Regional Tournament

(Spring Lake, Michigan) The Men in Black, a LEGO Robotics team made up of ten students from Spring Lake and coached by a Spring Lake parent, took top honors at the regional FIRST LEGO League tournament in Grandville on Saturday. The team scored FIRST PLACE OVERALL out of 27 teams from across Western Michigan. The team also won the FIRST PLACE award for Innovative Programming of their robot. This earned them the opportunity to advance to the State tournament to be held in Flint, Michigan on December 13.

“I couldn’t be more proud of the kids!” exclaimed coach David Wolters. “They were judged in four separate competition categories and in order to win first place overall they had to be extremely strong in all four.”

This year’s competition theme is “Climate Connections” and teams worldwide had roughly eight weeks to prepare for tournaments. At tournaments teams are judged in four categories: Teamwork, Technical Design and Programming, Robot Performance on the competition table, and presentation of their findings of a Research Project. Each category counts equally toward the final overall score.

The day started off on a low note with their robot scoring a very low 20 out of 400 points on its first run. The team had to quickly regain its composure and move on to judging rooms where the other categories are scored. Subsequent runs of the robot proved better but not as high as the team had been achieving in practice sessions.

 “We have some work to do on the robot over the next week but they’ll figure it out” said Wolters. “Fortunately, the kids kept their focus and didn’t let the robot performance distract them from the other categories. They scored near-perfect scores in all three.”

For research projects, teams were given the challenge to learn about a problem in their community that is caused by climate and then come up with an innovative solution to that problem and share it with their community. After meeting with Annis Water Resources Institute in Muskegon and The Army Corps of Engineers in Grand Haven, The Men in Black designed Bubble Buddy, a supplemental buoyancy system for Great Lakes freighters which can help ships enter harbors that are shallow due to fluctuating water levels. A short film that the team made can be viewed on YouTube and also the team web site www.LegoLakers.com

FIRST’s (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) mission is to design accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge and life skills while motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology and engineering.

The team was generously sponsored by Integrated Grinding & Machine Specialties and Klever Innovations. More information on the team and FIRST LEGO League can be found on the team’s web site www.LegoLakers.com