Laurel Legobots, an all-girls middle-school-aged robotics team, will represent the state of Maryland in the FIRST Lego League World Championships in April.
FIRST Lego teams participate in a two-part competition that challenges middle schoolers to create a solution for a real-world problem by designing, building and programming a robot out of Legos.
This year’s competition focuses around space. The six-member Laurel Legobots team learned about the International Space Station having a leak and devised a way to stop leaks.
The team consists of sixth-graders Sadie Byrum, Gabby Cunningham and Shreeya Thakre; seventh-grader Rachel Zhang and eighth-graders Alisa Hira and Saanvi Thakre. All hail from either North Laurel, Fulton or Scaggsville.
Of the 400 Maryland teams, the top 80 teams, including the Laurel Legobots advanced to the state competition in February at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The Laurel Legobots came out on top in the February competition.
Joe Cunningham, the Laurel Legobots coach, said the girls “are really proud of themselves.”
“I don’t think they [the girls] have come off the ceiling yet,” he said.
The Laurel Legobots are headed to Detroit on April 24, where they will compete against 100 teams from around the world at the Cobb Center.