Our school’s robotics team, the Sonic Squirrels, hosted a competition for FIRST’s Lego League jr., with teams that consisted of elementary school kids. They volunteered and helped the kids, along with individuals from other schools. Sean Wilson, who is a math teacher here at GP and an advisor for the robotics team, led the competition Saturday, the 3rd of December. “The morning session was all judging, so they were talking about their projects, about their robot, and a couple of other things,” Wilson said.  

The volunteers helped in this area by showing the kids where to go. “Basically, they were judge cueing, which meant they were going to get the teams and taking them to their other sessions,” Wilson said.  

After the morning sessions were over, the kids and volunteers had an hour to eat lunch. Teams either brought their own food or ordered it from various pizza places. Then after lunch was over, the afternoon sessions started. “In the afternoon, they did a Lego robotics challenge,” Wilson said.  

The Lego challenges consisted of the teams having their robots do jobs on the table. Timothy Ellis was one of the volunteers who kept the score and reset the field. “Teams put their robot on the game board and complete tasks called missions for points,” Ellis said. 

The volunteers monitored and ran the competition to make sure it went smoothly. “They were getting them up to the game, they were doing field resets and getting the fields all set up,” Wilson said. 

During the afternoon sessions, the Sonic Squirrel mascot, High-Fi, came out and visited the kids. Geoffrey Herrick, the man behind the mascot suit, was enthusiastically greeting the teams throughout the competition. “It’s really hot inside, but it’s really fun to walk around high fiving and waving at people,” Herrick said. 

The competition ended at 5, but that was not the end for this weekend-long event, as another competition continued the next day with different teams.