Say what?!?

Today, we spent all day at Boyson's Lego Robotics Qualifying Tournament.  After months of very hard work, it was good to see this finally come to fruition.  

His team consists of four boys ages 9-12.  They are a first-year team, with first-year coaches.  The original goal was never to be in it to win it, but to learn about Lego Robotics.  Let me tell ya, it has been a heck of a lot of work for these boys and their coaches.  Most practices were grueling with things moving at a snail's pace, and learning how to work together despite differing opinions and personalities.  Many lessons were learned in teamwork, sportsmanship, and problem solving as these boys learned to program their robot to do 14 specific tasks.  There was also a side 'project' to do with a theme of biomedical engineering.  They had to work together to solve problems relating to robotic prosthetic devices.  Heavy stuff.

Today, they competed against 19 other teams in areas of teamwork, project presentation, robot missions, and robot design.  Based on the scores from the robot missions, which were the only scores that we were allowed to see during the competition, we knew that the boys had done pretty well, even though they had only completed 10 of the 14 missions.

  But we never in a million years, expected this:

Holy Cow!  1st Place!  Say what??!? 

  

We are just so excited and thrilled, considering that all of us really were expecting that they boys would just do their best and have a good time and maybe come away with a sportsmanship award or something like that.  I guess it just goes to show that hard work and perseverance really do pay off. 

Now they are eligible to go to the State competition in January.  This is sort of a cruel irony - as the boys are really ready for a break, and two of our team members are moving to Texas on December 16th!  The jury is still out as to whether they will be able to return for the competition.

Either way, they did great today, and we are so proud of them! 

Next Xtreme Team 3.0
and their 1st Place Trophy