Middle School North is hosting their first lego competition by the First Lego League. Teams around LZ are competing for the regional championships, hoping to move to the state championship.

“The Lego competitions are international competitions with many other countries competing. Kids make teams of four to ten members. It costs around $500 for the teams’ first year, then $200 after the first year to buy parts for a robot. There are over 350 teams in the state of Illinois and about 278,000 kids around the world in the league,” Jim Peterson, regional qualifier coordinator, said.”There are 16 teams from regionals. Four of the teams go to the state tournament, then the international tournament. There are 90 major tournaments worldwide.”

Once the students have a team, they are judged on four different categories, according to Peterson.

The first category is a research project. This year’s theme is Nature’s Fury. Students are required to do research on climate disasters and make a physical product showing how natural disasters work, a presentation, and the students interview scientists for more information.

         The second category is a robot speed test. Each team receives a vinyl matt that has 20 tasks on them which the robot should complete. The teams who can complete the most tasks on the page gets a higher score. The work is done on a 4 by 8 foot table, and each robot is programmed beforehand to do the tasks given.

The third category is the engineering of the robot, the judges check the design concepts used to build the robot including the build quality of the robot. The last category is teamwork. The judges score for how well a team works together.

Eric Slaughter, eighth grader at MSN, is one of the many kids grades four through eight participating in the event. Slaughter has had friends compete with him in years past.

“In the past years, I had a few friends compete with me,” Slaughter said. “But this year, I am mentoring a few younger kids like Michael Malak and my brother, Brian Slaughter.”

Slaughter is competing and has a robot ready for the competition.

“The robot took a few days to build, but months to program,” Slaughter said.

Slaughter recommends the competition to people that are skilled programmers or to those who have a passion making things with legos.

Slaughter plans to partake in lego leagues and robot competitions once in high school.