For the first time, a group of Blue Coat students have entered into the international First Lego League competition.  After a very busy half term designing, engineering and programming a Lego robot, 10 pupils went to the University of Portsmouth on Friday 6th January to compete against  seven other regional teams for a place in the national finals.

After a tentative but solid start completing tasks on a complex obstacle course, the team realised that they would have to pull together to have a chance of winning, and they showed some excellent teamwork in improving and redesigning the robot throughout the day. After two rounds, we were within a few points of the win and, in the final round, we had a robot that was capable and had a good chance of taking the regional title – so much so, that the leading team were watching us on tenterhooks. Unfortunately, some bad luck in the last round meant that we had to settle for a fourth place overall finish; still an excellent achievement for the team’s first year competing.

There were some excellent individual efforts from Aulin Barton Brown and Alex Cleare, who impressed the judges with their presentation skills, but the standout man-of-the-match was undoubtedly Jatin Yadav, who as lead programmer worked diligently all day and in every session building up to the event.

The Lego Robotics club and team ‘Blue Streak’ meet every Tuesday lunchtime; any Year 7-11 students with an interest in programming, robotics, engineering or design can attend.

Mr Gilbertson, Physics teacher