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 NOVEMBER 22, 2009

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

(Spring Lake, Michigan) The Men in Black, a LEGO Robotics team made up of eight kids from Spring Lake and Grand Haven and coached by a Spring Lake parent, earned several honors at the regional FIRST LEGO League tournament in Grandville on Saturday. The team scored SECOND PLACE OVERALL out of 45 teams from across Western Michigan. The team also won the FIRST PLACE award for Innovative Robot Design and FIRST PLACE for robot score on the competition table. This earned them the opportunity to advance to the State tournament to be held in Flint, Michigan on December 12.

“I couldn’t be more proud of the kids!” exclaimed coach David Wolters. “The kids have been working very hard since the end of August and it’s good to see their dedication pay off.”

This year’s competition theme is “Smart Move” 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.

For research projects, teams were given the challenge to learn about a problem in their community that is transportation-related and then come up with an innovative solution to that problem and share it with their community. The Men in Black decided that they wanted to help Grand Haven and Spring Lake Schools find a solution to rapidly rising diesel prices.

Initially, the kids thought that a good solution would be to purchase hybrid buses that get recharged by generators on the exercise equipment at the Spring Lake Aquatic Center. After meeting with Rod Jonas and Dale Ortquist with the Grand Haven Public Schools transportation department, the team did some further research and learned that a more practical solution would be to collect used fryer oil from local restaurants and use that as fuel for the bus fleet.

The kids calculated that in Spring Lake alone there is enough used fryer oil to power several buses. This news was met with enthusiasm when the team met with Dennis Furton, Superintendent of Spring Lake Schools on November 18. The kids call their solution V.A.F.B. (Veggie Air Friendly Bus).

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 Klever Innovations, mungoh, and several individual sponsors. More information on the team and FIRST LEGO League can be found on the team’s web site www.LegoLakers.com