Students Head to State Robotics Finals

Team X-Force, a Northshore community-based FIRST Lego League (FLL) robotics team advanced to the Western Washington

Team X-Force (Photo provided by NSD)

Championships. Seven of the eight team members attend Northshore schools: Canyon Park and Leota middle schools. The state finals were held March 17 in Kent. This year 590 teams from across the state competed in the events leading up to state and 32 advanced to the finals. One team from state will get the opportunity to compete in the FLL World Festival in Houston, Texas.

To qualify for the state championship, the team competed and excelled at a number of events. First they participated in the North Sound qualifier regionals, Dec. 9 in Everett. Here, they received the Regionals Champion award and advanced to the semi-finals, which was held Jan. 19 in Tacoma. At the semi-finals the team was awarded the Teamwork award and qualified for the state finals.

During these events there were multiple missions the team’s robot had to complete. The missions were given to teams prior to the building and programming of the robot. The teams were judged on their performance in project, robot design and scoring, as well as project research, solution and core values.