A Great Time at LEGO HQ!
The SMART Team - Saturday, November 19, 2005

The Scofield Magnet Applied Robotics Team (S.M.A.R.T.) had a great time at our first competition of the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) season. It was especially exciting as it took place at LEGO's North American Head-quarters. All the participating teams were treated to a behind the scenes look at their packaging and distribution center. Everywhere you looked were boxes and bins and bags of little LEGO pieces! In addition, we were all lucky enough to get some shopping done at the company store.

The competition went just fine at the beginning. We were in line to present our research project to the panel of judges and we all felt we did well. Also, our Robot (Sub-Wally) did OK in his first two runs. But then we started having major problems. Sub Wall-y was having major problems with turns. We tried a bunch of things. We even had to skip one of the last runs because Sub Wall-y was in pieces at the time! Unfortunately, on our very last run of the day, after having just finished putting Sub Wall-y back together and re-download the programs, Sub-Wally didn't move at all. Although it was a huge disappointment, no one over-reacted. In fact, after the round was over we found the problem and fixed it. Even though it would not count towards our score the referees let us try the run again. Our robot worked perfectly! We cheered wildly. People looked at us a bit oddly though - after all the competition was over - it didn't count. It would have been our best score of the day.

Though our robot did not work as well as we would have liked, we still won two awards. The Gracious Professionalism Award and the Judges Award. We learned later that we received the Judges Award because the judges heard our team cheering for Sub-Wally even after the competition was over. They felt our enthusiasm and perseverance deserved a special award. With these awards we achieved our goal of qualifying for the state competition in December. It was a wonderful experience and one we are sure never to forget. Oh, and before I forget, we even got to tour the LEGO assembly lines!

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