Charles City LEGO League teams advance to state contest

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

Charles City is building a reputation for robotics after local TAG students had a great showing at the FIRST LEGO League regional qualifier.

The Charles City Cosmic Snowballs, coached by TAG instructor Patrick Nyberg and middle school librarian Kelsey VanderWerf, ventured to Waterloo to demonstrate their robot building abilities.

Along with the public school students, Immaculate Conception sent three teams of their own to the contest. Coached by TAG instructor Jeanne Hansen, the IC Smarties, made up of fourth graders; the Wildcat Big Brains, made up of fifth graders; and the Wildcat Coders, made up of sixth graders; were also at the event with their LEGO machines.

This is the first year of participating in the FIRST LEGO League for both schools, which tasks kids with building a robot out of LEGOs and programming it to perform a variety of simple tasks.

“We were learning right alongside the kids,” said Hansen.

After a couple months of working with the kits, the teams put their skills to the test at their first competitive event in Waterloo on Saturday, Dec. 9.

At the contest, teams were presented with a variety of challenges scattered around a pre-determined course for their robot to complete.

“In two-and-a-half minutes you need to complete as many missions as possible,” said VanderWerf.

With more missions to complete than can be done within the time limit, teams must not only figure out how to build their robot to accomplish its tasks quickly, but also plan a route for the robot to make the most efficient use of its time.

“Strategy is very important,” said Hansen.

The performance of the robot only accounts for a portion of the team’s overall score. Outside of the robot game, teams are judged on three other categories.

First, the students must give a presentation about their robot to the judges, explaining how it works and why they built it the way they did.

Students are also graded on an “innovation challenge,” coming up with a problem to solve and a plan to use technology to solve it. For the Charles City team, the students developed a conceptualized plan to create a website that compiles a list of organized activities for hobbies and interests in the community.

Finally, the kids are judged on the way they represent the core values of the contest throughout the competition, demonstrating good teamwork and sportsmanship along with their creativity and innovation.

“It’s competitive, but never at the expense of good will toward the other teams,” said Nyberg.

From engineering and coding to developing strategy and presenting for judges, the LEGO League challenge provides opportunities for students to utilize a wide variety of skills.

“It was a surprise to me how they really gravitated towards their strengths,” said Hansen.

“It was cool to watch them because they totally took charge,” said VanderWerf.

The hard work of the students paid off.

The Charles City Cosmic Snowballs will continue on to the state contest after achieving the highest score at the regional qualifier.

“We went in with… not that as an expectation,” said Nyberg.

“The kids crushed it,” said VanderWerf.

Out of the three IC teams, the IC Smarties and the Wildcat Big Brains also performed well enough to move on to the state contest, with Hansen being recognized with an award for coaching during the event.

The qualifying teams will compete in the state contest in Ames on Jan. 27-28, challenging them to refine their work to compete at an even higher level against the best teams in Iowa.

“They need those opportunities,” said Nyberg. “A lot of our students became more confident through the process.”

With enthusiastic support from parents and school administration, the coaches of both schools are happy to see their students celebrated for their work and are looking forward to expanding the program in the future.

“To be able to have this opportunity is really incredible,” said Hansen.