Blue Crew Robotics Team 6153 will host the Maine FIRST LEGO League competition Dec. 3 at Spruce Mountain High School in Jay. The Smart Fun Engineer team check its robot’s performance in November 2019 at the Maine FIRST LEGO League Western Maine Qualifier at Spruce Mountain Middle School in Jay. Livermore Falls Advertiser file photo
FARMINGTON — Blue Crew Robotics Team 6153 will host the Maine FIRST LEGO League competition Saturday, Dec. 3, at Spruce Mountain High School in Jay.
The team made up of students and mentors from Foster Career and Technical Education Center in Farmington and the high school will not host the New England Pine Tree District competition in March 2023.
“Sadly, Pine Tree has been canceled due to a lack of participation,” Lily Bailey, a team member from the high school wrote in an email Nov. 4. “Blue Crew is the most northern team in Maine so it would be out of the way for other teams.”
Maine teams will have to compete at regional events to advance to the next level of competition, Bailey noted.
“However, we are extremely proud to host the FIRST LEGO League state competition,” she wrote. “Blue Crew was selected to host this event because Spruce Mountain Area Robotics Team has hosted qualifiers in the past. Many team mentors made the transition to Blue Crew along with the plan for hosting the event.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, the Spruce Mountain Area Robotics Team had hosted the Maine FIRST LEGO LEAGUE Western Maine Qualifier at Spruce Mountain Middle School in Jay a few weeks before the state competition. They had done so since 2015. There were so many teams participating there wasn’t room for all to compete at the state match.
FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.
FIRST LEGO League challenges students to think like scientists and engineers. Teams choose and solve a real-world problem. They build, test, and program an autonomous robot using LEGO® MINDSTORMS® technology to solve a set of missions during the robot games. Teams also participate in an innovation project competition involving a five-minute presentation on an issue related to that year’s theme.
“The reason we are hosting the state competition is that the turnout is expected to be fairly smaller in comparison to past years,” Bailey wrote. “We are expecting to have about 32 teams, making Spruce Mountain High School a suitable venue. There are 32 LEGO league teams across Maine competing in this year’s challenge. This event will be fully run by Blue Crew. We will be running the entire event as well as concessions, judging, and (refereeing) the robot competition. This takes a lot of help from volunteers, families, and Blue Crew team members.”
Blue Crew members welcome support from the community. Volunteers or donors can visit the Blue Crew Robotics website or Facebook page.
“It will take a lot of work to pull an event like this off so we encourage people to get involved in any capacity,” Bailey said.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
