At the Peak Center, Mr. Abernathy reviewed the schedule with his team of Lego Robotics competitors. These future engineers had five minutes to either watch other schools’ teams show off their robots’ abilities, watch videos and examine 3-D models in the hallway, or go to the practice area for last-minute preparation. As they headed off in different directions, the Raiders heard loud chants of encouragement and saw KMS listed on the leaderboard on the big screens.

Brandon Mendez, 7th, joined the Robotics team because he wanted to enjoy robotics and Legos at the same time since he had experience in both.

“I never knew it would be my favorite reason to go to school,’’ Brandon said.

Oscar Picazo, 6th, liked making creative labels for Speed Tag.

“It’s exciting because of the enthusiasm shown by the team,” Oscar said. “These attachments to the robot can score us extra points. Thinking outside the box is fun and helps with creativity. We never gave up and always kept trying.”

Ariani Torres, 7th, joined as a way to test critical-thinking skills.

“I wanted to challenge myself, and I love competitive things because it’s fun,” Ariani said.

In their after-school practices to prepare for the Lego Robotics competition, the team split into two groups. The first focused on the Innovation Project and set the goal of making Speed Tag more popular. They made a commercial, designed a mascot, created a video game concept, an activity center concept like Spartan, designed equipment, and had a 3-D model of the equipment made.

“I enjoyed everyone working together because we all had good ideas and great personalities,” Jayceion Robinson, 6th, said.

Next, they pitched to Walmart representatives the idea of selling equipment in stores and to Boys & Girls Club the idea that kids would have a place to play Lego Robotics.

“I was impressed with how prepared the kids were and how they knew exactly what they were trying to accomplish,” Mr. Abernathy said. “It helped that the representatives talked to the kids and made them feel at ease. It was not like that at competition.”

The second group worked together to make the robot and decided which missions they believed they could get done in the 2.5 minutes at the competition table. They chose missions where they had to do very little changing of attachments and focused ones where they could deliver and push things because those only required one attachment.

All teammates had to know every part for the competition, so everyone worked with the robot and everyone did the innovation project at least once. At competition, Kimmons’ The KMS Lego Robotics team competed against thirty other schools, improved their scores in almost every category, and tied for third at the table competition.

Oscar liked how the other schools tried their best.

“Their stands (projects) were creative, and we all wished every team the best of luck,” Oscar said. “Even though we didn’t make it to the finals, we still tried our best.”

Brandon preferred the Innovation Project.

“It was fun explaining everything we did and just doing our part for the robot to score points,” Brandon said.

Emmanuel Castro, 6th, started Lego Robotics in 5th grade.

“The best moment in the competition was getting 2nd place on coding,” Emmanuel said.

Ady Phimvongsa, 7th, appreciated how the team encouraged each other.

“Even though we were having a hard time, we didn’t give up,” Ady said.

Dezyrae Collins’ best moments included going against other schools’ robots and presenting their project.

“My team got to see what our robot could do, and for the presentation, we got to show the judges what we did and succeeded,” Dezyrae said.

Overall, KMS earned a proficiency rating of three out of four on the Innovation Project.

“I’m most proud of how determined the students were to be excellent,” Mr. Abernathy, sponsor, said. “They practiced for over eight hours after school the week of the competition and kept adding new codes and innovations to their project. They were never satisfied with what they had and always wanted to do more. On the day of the competition, they wanted to go to the practice table and add more codes to improve their score. That’s a team worth being proud of!”