Jedi Engineers are going to World Festival!

 WOW! What an amazing adventure! Please read our story from the Go Fund Me page below.

We are the Eagle Valley Middle School First LEGO League Robotics Team, The Jedi Engineers! We are from Carson City, Nevada. We are a team of five 8th graders and one 7th grader. Our coaches and mentors are: Lisa Stocke-Koop, Eric Fancher and Jason Koop.

We have been invited to the FIRST World Championship in Houston, Texas this April! We are stunned, overwhelmed and excited! 

The First LEGO League is a three prong competition. It involves building and programming a LEGO robot to accomplish specific tasks on the field, (mat), provided. Teams are also given a problem/issue to research and provide an innovative solution for.  Teams must go into their community and speak with experts and share their results. The third prong of the competition is the Core Values! Teams must exemplify FLL Core Values and display Gracious Professionalism at all times.

Our team has had quite the roller coaster of a season! The students have worked so hard!! They participated in our Qualifier Tournament in December and won 2nd place Core Values. EVERY category was marked as exemplary! Unfortunately, our robot had more than its share of glitches! In fact our robot game kept us out of the Northern Nevada Championships!!

Despite this team's disappointment, they were the ONLY team that stayed to clean up the entire event venue! WOW! What integrity! The students were put on an alternate list for the Championship, because of their high marks in all other categories and their behavior before, during and after the season.

Without any guarantees that they would be placed in the Championship tournament they took home the field kit and robot. Over their Winter Break there was a complete robot redesign, build and programming!

They continued to practice and improve their project. They reached out to the community, shared and learned! 

They did receive an invitation to the Championships. They kept working and improving. These kids were motivated! They started a blog of their journey! Check out the link!

Championships arrived and they were ready! They performed in an outstanding manner all day! THEY HAD A BLAST! They knew they had put in the work and they enjoyed the day! At the end of the tournament they were rewarded for all of their efforts by winning the 2016 - 2017 Northern Nevada First LEGO League 1st place Champion's Award! With winning this award they were invited to the World Championship at Houston, Texas!

Now, we are on a fundraising drive to get them there! Airfare, hotels, meals, transportation, banners, swag, shipping, etc. are all going to be fairly expensive. Registration alone for the event is $1,000! We are a determined group though and have multiple fundraisers in the works!

We appreciate any assistance you can give us! We are extremely grateful for all of the support we have received throughout this amazing season!

Thank you and see you in Houston!

www.gofundme.com/lego-team-to-world-championship Go Fund Me Link