After finding success at a statewide competition Feb. 15, six North Allegheny middle schoolers will head to an international Lego competition in June with their team Bands of Steel. The competition, organized by the international youth organization First Lego League, tasks participants with constructing and coding a Lego robot in addition to advocating in their communities.
Bands of Steel, made up of 10 students from several schools, placed fourth in the state competition in Hershey after taking first in the Southwestern Pennsylvania championship. According to Marcel Bergerman, the team’s coach, that win earned them a ticket to Daytona Beach, Fla., in late June to compete in the Florida Sunshine Invitational against nearly 100 teams from about 25 countries.
Bergerman coaches at MySTEM Academy, a youth education center in Pine founded by his wife, Maria Yamanaka. He said Bands of Steel is a special team — but not just for its engineering skills.
A large part of the competition involves community outreach about a specific theme, he said.
This year, that theme was ocean conservation. In his nearly two decades of coaching, Bergerman said Bands of Steel had done more work in their community than any other group he had seen.
Though the group dedicated plenty of hours to creating and programming a foot-tall autonomous Lego robot, the students also offered presentations about conservation topics such as ocean acidification at local schools, YMCAs and even Google’s office in Bakery Square.
Nathan Bauer, an eighth grader at Carson Middle School, said the group’s presentations reached more than 100 students and a recording online drew thousands of views.
Nathan, who is in his fourth year in the competition, said this year he also helped author a children’s book titled “The Adventures of Shelly and Shelldon” about sea turtles dealing with pollution in their habitats.
The group’s diversity of age and experience, Nathan said, proved to be a strength because everyone offered different perspectives.
“Everyone can give their own ideas, and we can all give feedback, and I think that really helps us,” Nathan said.
At the state competition, Nathan said judges were impressed by the amount of community work the team had put in, but it also was useful to see the methods of other teams.
As for the robot, Ingomar Middle School eighth grader Luke Challinor said he served as a technician while the team built numerous attachments for its automaton to fulfill tasks assigned by the judges.
The robot moves on a standard 4-foot-by-8-foot mat. During three rounds, the team was tasked with completing 15 missions in two and half minutes. Often these were aquatic-themed, such as moving Lego krill to a whale elsewhere on the mat, Bergerman said.
Despite some robotic troubles during the state championship, Luke said he and the team were happy with the competition’s result.
“It was kind of a surprise to us, but we were really happy about it,” he said.
Ethan Murick, another eighth grader at Ingomar, said preparing for the competition helped improve his Python, a computer coding language, but it also offered him a “wide view” of the issues facing the ocean.
To improve the robot’s mobility in preparation for the upcoming tournament, Ethan said he plans to move the robot’s motor to its front.
His first year in the tournament, Ingomar sixth grader Noah Wang said the competitions have been “really fun,” and he has appreciated the guidance from older players.
Mostly working on presentation and outreach efforts, Noah said he initially was intimidated by the public speaking aspect of the project, but he grew “more comfortable” as Bands of Steel continued its efforts.
Though many of his teammates will age out of FLL next season, Noah said he hopes to continue participating in tournaments in the future. For now, he said he thinks the 10 players have a good chance at the invitational.
Rounding out the team’s North Allegheny representation are Ingomar students Thanura Saravanan, a sixth grader, and Oliver Hagerty, a seventh grader.
That invitational, Bergerman said, is the “highest level of play,” but he said the team has done an “enormous amount of work” already.
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“It’s going to be a lot of fun going there and playing with these other teams and learning from the best in the world,” Bergerman said.
Aside from tweaks to the robot, Nathan said the group will have to do some more outreach before June to spread the word about ocean conservation.
The eighth grader said the members of Bands of Steel, outside of their mutual interests in STEM, have built bonds of steel as friendships developed during the competition process. And that, Nathan said, has made the process easier.
“When you know you can rely on your team, it’s not really stressful. It becomes fun,” he said. “And you become more than teammates, you become friends.”
Bands of Steel will compete June 24-28 in Daytona Beach.