FIRST Lego League Rookie Tournament 2009

We woke up really early today to drive to Greensboro so that we could compete in a FIRST Lego League (Click on the link to see what FLL is) Tournament.

Christian, Carl, and the other kids on the team, The Charlie Bytes, had been working really hard to get our robot, Charlie, working. It wasn't until the day before that we actually had the robot doing our missions properly.

Also, we were working on our presentation about the drought.

We will have videos and pictures of both on soon.

Once we arrived, we got into the huge line for parking. Then we had some chill time before we started our runs. In practice, we had obtained 125 points; however, in competition, it is very rare that you get your max.

Our first run, we got 25 points, which was a little disappointing. We were in a tournament with only first-year teams, and there was another in December with veteran teams. It turns out many of the veteran teams' runs were around the score of our first run. Also, not so surprisingly, the rookies struggles a bit this year too. I guess that we were not as far behind the eight ball as we thought.

Anyways, our next and second run was a lot better; we got 55 points. WOW! Not our best, but we were still very pleased.

Next, we got our best score of the day: 85!

Then in our forth and final run we got 60. Overall, out of forty teams we finished tied for thirteenth.

Then we had a hurried lunch before our teamwork interview. We did pretty well there.

After a little time we went to our technical interview. We showed a couple judges how Charlie worked and how he did his missions. Then we told them how we programed him. They were impressed with our use of unit conversion, My Blocks, and variables, which our coach brought up the idea of using. We thought we did pretty well in the interview.

We changed and delivered our presentation a little while later.

We then went back to the first building and watch two veteran teams deliver a Teamwork Interview, and Technical Interview, and a Presentation.

Then we formed a line for the "Parade of Teams."

After being seated again, there was a award presentation.

The trophies were really cool, made out of Legos; however, we did not think we placed well enough to win one.

But we were pleasantly surprised when we were announced the winners of the Programming Award. Remember our technical interview? Well, the judges were impressed with our use of unit conversion, My Blocks, and variables. WOW! It was so exciting.

Again, we will have pictures and video of our fun-filled day up soon. Check back the next few days.