From the front left are Elliot, Nick, Levi and Stephanie.
Bringing up the rear are Me (Phil), Willie and Arlene.

It was a winning day for both Garrett County FIRST LEGO League teams competing in Pittsburgh this weekend.

The Southern Middle Team won the First Place Prize for the Nano-Quest table Mission (with a score of 357 out of 400), and the Northern Middle Team won the First Place Prize for their Robot's Hardware Design.

Each team also won a Third Prize Trophy for other engineering and research categories.

Garrett FIRST LEGO League teams compete in Baltimore.

We'll probably leave the day before and do a field trip at Oceaneering along the way.

Wow... What a day.

I got up at 4:25am and the team drove en-mass to Pittsburgh CMU Robotics Lab for the PA FIRST LEGO League Championship.

Team 2065 "NeXT Gen" (one of my Southern teams) was up first on table 5/6. It was our first and best match, with a points total of 357.

This number held up as #1 for the entire competition. There was a little panic in the second round when one parent was claiming that their team got 360 points, but that must have been a mistake, because it never showed up on the score board.

FLL Team 2065 put this summary together, showing what they had learned from research and visiting StarClimber team leader Matt Abrams.

We had a joint FLL practice at the GEARS center last Sunday a ran matches against Chuck's Northern Middle School team. It was fun competing against another team for once.

Afterwards, both teams got to run Meshach (our FRC robot) for a while to burn off some steam.

Our Space Elevator presentation is also going well. The team presented it to the parents and educators that showed

Southern Middle School FIRST LEGO League team 2065 will compete this Saturday at the CM Robotics Center. There are 68 teams competing, but we think we should make a good showing.

The loft area's ralings were pretty basic, so I just finshed beefing them up, and walling in the bump-out. Now we have a cool Sky-Box that can be a "Member Only" space when running competitions.

The Sky-Box will also be a fun spot to control the robots from.

The next project will be adding benches to the loft area so we can setup a Lab (for building electronics and writing software.

Watch the 2007 FRC Game Video-Stream at the GEARS center big-screen, and then start brain-storming while we mark out the playing field.

County FFL teams will practice at the GEARS center side-by-side. We'll run real timed matches & determine points. Come and see how well out teams will do at the real competitions.