FIRST LEGO League Challenge
Boyce & Fort Couch Competitive Robotics Opportunity
Friendly competition is at the heart of Challenge, as teams of students ages 9-14 engage in research, problem-solving, coding, and engineering – building and programming a LEGO® Education SPIKE Prime robot that navigates the missions of a robot game. As part of Challenge, teams also design an innovative solution to a real-world problem relevant to the theme. To learn more about the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Challenge, visit their website.
Specific documents regarding the 2023 MASTERPIECE Challenge can be found HERE.
JOIN A MIDDLE SCHOOL COMPETITIVE FLL TEAM
For the 2023/2024 school year, we have modified the middle school competitive robotics opportunities. Interested parents and students should attend an informational meeting on Thursday, September 7th from 6-7 PM in the Upper St Clair High School Resource Center off of the main Academic Entrance to learn more.
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Allow 5th-8th graders to participate. 5th & 6th graders may join a Boyce level FLL team while 7th & 8th graders join a Fort Couch level FLL team.
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Create a framework to allow students to invest more time. Extend the amount of practice time for the competitive teams by moving meetings to evenings/weekends.
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In order to accommodate the large interest in robotics competitions, teams are now required to have a volunteer parent coach who will need to complete USC School District clearance, FIRST Robotics clearances & training, and be school board approved. These coaches, and students, will be guided by the middle school competitive robotics coordinator during weekly meetings. Parent coaches are encouraged to meet with their team additionally, outside the regular meeting time with the coordinator.
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To join a USC middle school competitive robotics team you must sign up on the JOIN page. It is ideal if your child knows of others they would like to have on their team and if a parent is able to volunteer to coach. All efforts will be made to have students on teams with friends. The number of teams created will be based on student interest and availability of parent volunteers. There will be a maximum of 6 teams.
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TEAM LOGISTICS
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6 students per team
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1-2 parent volunteer coaches per team (coaches must attend practices and competitions)
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1st semester commitment only
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Attend meetings Tuesday & Thursday evening from 6-8 PM (Fort Couch LGI)
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Attend scrimmages and competitions on weekends based on team's interest per the Western PA FLL schedule (www.pafll.com)
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Cost to participate is $150 per student. Families experiencing financial hardships should reach out to Tracy Smith for possible accommodations.
2023 WESTERN PA COMPETITION SCHEDULE
Below is the list of educational scrimmages, competitive scrimmages, and the Grand Championship for our region. Each USC Robotics FLL team will attend a minimum of 1 Educational Scrimmage, 1 Competitive Scrimmage, and the Grand Championship. (Note that the 11/11 competitive scrimmage is hosted by the the USC Robotics FTC Team TeraBridges and takes place at USC High School.)
More information regarding PA FLL can be found at
www.pafll.com
ABOUT THE COORDINATOR
Matt C. Wilson got his start in classroom and competition robotics in 2016 as part of the CMU spinout company Robomatter, building robotics and computer science curricula for the VEX IQ, Cortex, and V5 platforms as well as the Lego EV3, using Robomatter's RobotC programming language and Robot Virtual Worlds simulator.
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Matt also held the role of programming mentor for two of TeamRobotix' club competition teams, the Gear Grinders and Organized Chaos. The Gear Grinders went on to win the 2020 PA State Championship for VRC, sadly to have their VEX Worlds ambitions cut short by the pandemic.(https://teamrobotix.com/featured-team)
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He is excited to return to middle school competitive robotics as the FLL Coordinator for USC!
