The Brick Bots hold a practice outdoors.
Three teams that include students from the San Marino Unified School District have advanced to the championship round of the 2020-21 FIRST LEGO League Challenge thanks to their outstanding performances at a qualifying tournament.
The Challenge is an international competition involving skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, critical thinking and presentation for elementary and middle school students. This year, FIRST — the nonprofit For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — teamed with Disney and Lucasfilm for the 2020-21 robotics season’s sports and fitness-oriented theme.
Due to COVID-19, the Los Angeles region held qualifying tournaments virtually on Nov. 22- 23. All participating teams submitted two videos for judging; the first, an uncut video for the robot run challenge and the second, an edited presentation for the innovation project challenge. The latter ties directly to this year’s theme. Teams identified a specific problem linked to inactivity and how to encourage physical and mental strength, all while using FLL’s core values: discovery, innovation, impact, inclusion and teamwork.
This year, San Marino was well represented at the qualifying tournament by the Brick Bots, SF Hackers and Sun Brothers.
The Brick Bots are a four-member team of Huntington Middle School 6th-graders: Ava Freiburg, Declan Li, Layla Shen and Matthew Woo. Coached by Jerry Shen and John Freiburg, the squad is in its third FLL season and this is the second time it has advanced to the championship round. The Brick Bots won a Core Values award for their performance at this year’s qualifying tournament. Despite the challenges of social distancing, the team adapted and utilized video conference calls and outdoor practice sessions for safety. While the members all missed attending a live tournament with the excitement of having to perform under pressure, they enjoyed working together again as a team and collaborating in new ways.
The SF Hackers are all 5th-graders, three from Valentine Elementary School and one from High Point Academy. They include Michael Mo, William Pan, Justin Yu and Terry Zhang. Coached by Song Xue, they earned both a Core Values award and a Robot Performance award at the qualifying tournament. They also had the distinction of earning the most robotic points of all Los Angeles qualifying tournament teams. All team members agree that it’s nice to win awards, but what has meant more to them this year has been teamwork, learning new problem-solving skills and embracing different ideas, especially while overcoming the difficulties caused by the pandemic together.
The Sun Brothers are a new team this year, but not entirely new to FLL. Willi, a 6th-grader at HMS, participated last year with a Valentine Elementary team that reached the championship round. This year, due to the pandemic, he looked closer to home for a teammate because the family lives with its 82-year-old grandmother. Alex’s little brother William, a 3rd-grader at Valentine, stepped up to the plate and The Sun Brothers team was born. Coached by the boys’ parents, Xinyan Huang (Yan) and Jian Sun, the team was a total family effort.
All three San Marino teams have advanced to the Los Angeles championship tournament on Saturday, Dec. 12.
