These bright young minds take on tough robotic challenge

Twelve teams of young school students from the Okanagan are among the thousands around the world who have risen to tackle the FIRST LEGO League Challenge.

They worked together in the atrium of UBCO’s engineering building Saturday, running their bots through test after test to iron out any last-minute bugs before their creations performed the judged challenge as part of this qualifier.

“They’re competing at a robot game where they program a robot for two and a half minutes to go and complete a number of challenges,” tournament coordinator Tobias Blaskovits told Kelowna10. “They get scored according to how many challenges they can complete.”

He said this is the first time they’ve been able to host an in-person tournament in Kelowna, and it was focused on the school curriculum’s core competencies.

“Students are discovering new learning, this idea that they’re innovative, this idea that they're thinking about their impact in the world, that they’re using teamwork and inclusion, and overall that they’re just having fun,” he explained. “We want them to have fun, and to think of engineering and design in a little different light.”

Among the bright young minds was Mya Quinn from Dr. Knox Middle School, who was incredibly excited to be a part of the competition.

“I thought robots and engineering was really interesting and I wanted to try it out,” Quinn said. “I would like to be an engineer in the future or something around that area.”

She said her team had some mishaps, but they worked together to overcome them.

After several rounds of competition, the top six teams earned the opportunity to go on to compete at a provincial level .