The First Lego League community in Siloam Springs continues to get better and this year is no different.
The team will be attending the Arkansas Razorback Open Invitational, which is an international tournament. The team from Siloam Springs will be representing the state of Arkansas.
First Lego League is an organization in which students learn coding and robotics from constructing and competing with Lego robots. The competitions feature students maneuvering Lego robots through obstacles and challenges, as well as an innovation challenge meant to spark new ideas.
"We're at the middle school level, which is ages nine to 14. Each year is a different theme; this year the theme is energy generation and production," said Jeremy Weathers, one of the team's coaches.
Weathers says that the league helps inspire critical and creative thinking and helps with building problem solving skills.
The team attended multiple competitions throughout the fall semester, including a qualifying tournament in December where they ranked second out of 19 teams from Arkansas. They went on to state, where they performed well enough to get invited to the Arkansas Razorback Open Invitational, which draws in 80 teams, many of which are international.
In addition to one team per state, the competition will feature teams from Spain, Japan, Italy and other countries from around the globe.
"This is one of the top run tournaments at this level and it's pretty cool," said Weathers.
While they have a passion for teaching kids about robotics, both coaches noted that they had day jobs outside of that. Weathers is a software developer and fellow coach Dave Ellcey works in the marketing department at Simmons.
"We don't have a goal of necessarily winning this competition; this is going to be my first time taking a team to this level. The kids made a goal to get a call back from the judges, meaning they performed well enough on the first round of the competition to be in the top 20," said Weathers.
"It's a bit of an audacious goal for their level but we've seen a pattern every year where we are improving so it's definitely within the realm of possibility," added Weathers.
The Razorback Open Invitational is May 18 through the 21.
Weathers says that between now and then, their goal is to practice, have fun and raise money for future endeavors.
Weathers says that, more than anything, he wants the kids to learn and have fun. "I try to step back and let them do all the work themselves. If they have questions, I'd be happy to answer them but I like letting them learn from trial and error."
Spencer Bailey/Herald-Leader One of the two robots that students use during the obstacle course challenge portion of the competition. The robots are built, coded and driven by the students.