Robotics Team

Once upon a time at the beginning of 4th grade Ashton came home with an application to join the Robotics team at the elementary school. Several kids who were interested went to the initial meeting and they all had to send in their forms and wait for the try out date. Ashton wanted to be on the team so badly that he prayed nightly to do well at the try out. Try outs came and went and he felt pretty good about it and then the day came a couple weeks later that Ashton found out he made the team. I happened to be out front waiting for the kids after school when I saw him riding his bike around the corner with the biggest smile on his face. He made it!

Before the big competition day I had no idea what the team would actually be doing. It was so fun to see the months worth of hard work take place.

The first lego league is all about core values and teaching team work. They have a series of presentations and tasks to do behind closed doors with a juding panel. Then in between those they do the actual lego robot part. Ashton was one of the programmers so he and his partner would go in set up the robot and code it to perform tasks. Each task was judged and the teams were all cheering and chanting in the background.

Nana and Papa happened to be in town for the competition day which was an added bonus because David had to work. 

At the end of the day everyone waited patiently for the awards ceremony. They gave out at least a dozen awards for all sorts of things like best presentations, costumes, posters etc. All sorts of trivial stuff was being awarded and Sippel's team wasn't winning a single thing. It was so disheartening to watch as the kids nerves were getting to them. Then at the very end when they were doing the overall first place award for the district Ashton's team the Robothunder was called! It was such a happy moment watching their team run up front and be cheered on!

Ashton's team had become his best friends after so many practices after school together. It was so cool to see how this group of kids worked their tails off and were rewarded.

Not to mention their coaches were pretty incredible. The one in the red in the back was Ashton's 4th grade teacher and coach. He's the kind of teacher they make movies about and Ashton just adores him. What an awesome experience, we're hoping there are more lego robotics competitions in our future.