Lego League Teams

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by lynca

I've seen a 355 and 375 at central Texas FLL , however I don't think the winner of the Champion's award is going to World Festival. I wonder why the FLL world festival is so exclusive ? How many teams qualify ?

If you had one from each state tournament, and there were 50 of them alone, that's 50 teams already. Now add one for each country (or more) who are involved in FLL and that is already a huge amount.

If FRC had as many teams as FLL you would be asking the same questions, because it would have to be (even) more limiting as to who got in every year than it is.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

If you had one from each state tournament, and there were 50 of them alone, that's 50 teams already. Now add one for each country (or more) who are incolved in FLL and that is already a huge amount.

And some states have more than one already--SoCal has two (Legoland and Manhattan Beach) and there is at least one in Northern California. Try condensing those three into one.

[LizzieP]

At the NH state tournament, there were three teams that scored at least one 400. They were the Renewable Energy Hogs #20,and the Flying Geeks, and my FLL team, Mindstorms Mayhem #33(who scores were 398, 400, 400, 394, 397, and 400). All three teams used the RCX and gained the big fairness bonus. By the way, my team was the robot performance winners.

NH was one of the state tournaments that gave out a ticket to Atlanta. The Inventioneers won the Champions award and the Flying Geeks got second place.

The teamwork challenge at the state competition was making a mosaic from 150 pennies. At the qualifying tournament my team attended, you were given newspaper, tape, paper clips, and staples. You then had to build the tallest tower you could. Anyody know any other teamwork challenges from this year?

[Allison K]

Originally Posted by LizzieP

The teamwork challenge at the state competition was making a mosaic from 150 pennies. At the qualifying tournament my team attended, you were given newspaper, tape, paper clips, and staples. You then had to build the tallest tower you could. Anyody know any other teamwork challenges from this year?

My FRC team had the kids build a house of cards at the scrimmage we hosted. The tournament I judged at had something to do with Jenga towers, though I"m not sure exactly what since I was judging presentations. The regional tournament many of my teams went to gave the kids a long threaded rod and a bucket of nuts, and they had to thread as many of the nuts all the way across the rod as possible.

[wilsonmw04]

We took our FTC team to the VA&DC finals at JMU over the weekend. We had a great time showing off our robot and the kids had a blast driving it :-)
I found out something interesting while i was talking to the coaches/parents of the FLL teams: They are really, really excited about the FTC format. They see it as the next logical step as their kids outgrow FLL. Some of the questions they asked were, "how much does it cost?" "is there a Project that goes with the robot?" "how much time does it take to make one if those?"

They were quite pleased with the answers i gave them. Look for a lot of new teams in the future.

PS: another observation i saw was a lot of the teams were not affiliated with a school. All the students went to the same school, but they found it very difficult to work within the confines of the school's rules. Instead of jumping through the hoops, they did it themselves. Has anyone noticed that as well? Does anyone know if FIRST sees this as a problem?

[bhsrobotics1671]

Buchanan Robotics volunteered over 20 hours at the state championships in Clovis, CA. We helped mentor 12 other teams before the actual championship event. We had 2-4 of our team member per FLL team in our area. 3 of the teams we mentored placed in the top ten. 73 teams actually competed at the tournament. Our robotics team recieved two awards for our help in the tournament and mentoring.

[Laaba 80]

I have not seen a perfect score yet this season. I mentored two teams this year, neither of which could get perfect scores. I was a ref at the Mukwanago regional, and the WI state tournament, and the best score was 397. That team uses an RCX, and is capable of a perfect score.

[GVDrummer]

Some teams that qualified through the Grandville Invitational hosted by Team #288 the RoboDawgs were home schooled or just a group of kids. The top teams were from schools however.

[Akash Rastogi]

We run 4 or 5 teams just in our district and a few others from local counties.MORTalso hosts the NJ State Championships at Mount Olive high School which btw went very well this past Saturday .

[Pavan Dave]

We have three regionals in Texas and I believe all of them are Atlanta qualifiers. Our team mentors about 20 teams (+/- 1 or 2), and we run the Lone Star FLL tournament. I think one or two of the teams we mentored made it into the final four but our approach to mentoring is different and so the kids do all of the stuff and we just point them in the right direction and teach them things here and there.

Also many parents have asked me about the next step in robotics for their kids and in our district BEST is the answer. I also told a few parents about VEX because they asked and I think that is a great Christmas present for a middle school kid or even a high school kid or an engineer.

EDIT: Link to Largest FLL Tournament in the World thread.

[pakratt1991]

the FLL team I, and another student worked with, 3750, The Micro Transformers, scored a 375, 400, and a 330 at the Competition in Corvallis Oregon. At which my team volunteered.

[Tsom467]

Team 467 (Duct Tape Bandits) has had Lego teams for the past 7 or 8 years or so, usually multiple team. This year we had 4 teams, consisting of 10 middle school students ("Junior Bandits"). 10 of the high school students coach and mentored the 4 teams. We went to 3 competitions this year and for the first time, we held our own Lego League competition (www.mindstormmayhem.org). Our teams did a fantastic job, bringing home several awards, from spirit (boy they were loud!), to Leadership awards.

The Lego teams are our "feeder" program. Many of the high school team members started out on the lego team - we have seniors this year that have been involved in FIRST for 6+ years!