FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 Contact:     Kurt Twining, 328-5274
                    Elaine Naleski, 520-2286

 Russell Middle School’s FIRST LEGO League Scrimmage

Colorado Springs School District 11’s Russell Middle School will hold its FIRST LEGO League Scrimmage on Saturday, October 31, 2009, in the Russell gymnasium, 3825 E. Montebello Dr., 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Picking out the right costume, decorating the yard with cobwebs and caution tape, buying treats and candies to hand out to trick-or-treaters, carving the jack o’lantern, many would consider these typical preparations for Halloween.  For several groups of middle school students throughout Colorado Springs, Halloween preparations this year have a different feel:  Building an autonomous robot and programming it to do several tasks on a LEGO city board. researching a problem having to do with transportation and coming up with a creative and innovative solution, learning to get along with a group of other students and learning how to work together as a team, these students are rapidly preparing for the first ever Russell Middle School Halloween Invitational FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Scrimmage. 

FLL is one part of the FIRST robotics programs.  Inventor Dean Kamen organized For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology (FIRST) with the intent to show that working in science and technology fields can be just as exciting and rewarding as being a professional athlete or movie star.  FIRST started with a competition in the high school where students built a robot from the ground up and competed with these robots.  Soon, however, FIRST organizers discovered the program would be much more successful if they created a pipeline of sorts where students started becoming interested in robotics, science, and technology in the middle school level; thus, FLL was born. 

For approximately eight weeks every fall, teams all over the world work together to learn new things about the current theme for FLL.  In addition to programming a LEGO robot to go around a mock ‘city’ and perform various tasks associated with that year’s theme, all teams pick some problem that affects their community.  They spend time researching the problem and work to share their solutions with others.  The theme last year, Climate Connections, saw the teams looking at how mankind has impacted the climate of the world, and what needs to be done to cope with or fix these changes.  This year’s theme, SMART Move, has the teams investigating the current problems with transportation systems. 

The idea for a Halloween scrimmage actually came to teachers Kurt Twining and Adam Truex during the FLL season last year.  Being second year coaches they wanted to give their teams a way to measure their progress during the season before they headed to the ‘real’ competition.  One week before Twining’s competition and two weeks before Truex’s, the two teams met to present their project and test out their robots in front of ‘judges’ who were a group of the coaches and two parents who volunteered to come in and help.  “The event was very low-key and informal, but monumental in helping the teams measure their progress in the season,” Twining remarked.   

Truex stated “we wanted to give the kids a head’s up on what to expect in the tournament just a few weeks away.” 

Their work paid off, for both teams ended up qualifying for the state championship.   

After the excitement of the season wore off, both considered what they could do next year to make the event more meaningful.  As rumors of other teams starting up in their school district circulated, they decided they would host a scrimmage for other teams to help them prepare for the tournaments as well.   

“This year the stakes at the scrimmage are much higher,” Twining said.  “We have six teams participating, our two teams, two teams from Academy District 20, and two brand new teams from Colorado School District 11.  We hope our teams will make a good showing at the scrimmage, but the real purpose of the scrimmage is not to see who wins or who loses, but to help all of the teams make sure they are prepared for the qualifier tournament on the 14^th of November.”   

“We’re excited to have other schools participating,” Truex commented.  “It really helps the students to see they are not the only ones working on these activities and projects.”   

Engineering professionals from all across the city have been positively responding to the call to be volunteer judges at the event.  The coordinator of the tournament at UCCS, which hosts about 48 teams, is excited about the upcoming scrimmage.  She said it is great for Twining and Truex to be hosting such an event to help the teams prepare for the tournament.   

“The day truly will be an exciting one,” Truex said.  “We have six full teams coming, Mollica’s Italian restaurant is catering lunch, engineering professionals will be our official judges, the head referee for the UCCS tournament will be getting a chance to practice before the actual tournament, we’ll be handing out door prizes at the end, and best of all, the award winning robot that Coronado High School designed last year will be coming to hand out lolly pops!”

 So maybe the students will get a taste of Halloween after all.